New Moons and Sabbaths

a novel - Copyright Stan Goff, 2025

All characters and all actions—minus a few historical references and some of the places—are fictional. No lawyers necessary.

Bring your worthless offerings no longer,
Incense is an abomination to me.
New moon and Sabbath, the calling of assemblies—
I cannot endure iniquity and the solemn assembly.
I hate your new moon festivals and your appointed feasts,
They have become a burden to me;
I am weary of bearing them.
So when you spread out your hands in prayer,
I will hide my eyes from you;
Yes, even though you multiply prayers,
I will not listen.
Your hands are covered with blood.

—Isaiah 1: 13-15

PART ONE

The world was in her heart already, like the small spot of decay in a fruit.

—Graham Greene

1

Camp Virtue, Afghanistan
July 16, 2010

A far-off passenger plane flickered in the sun over Kabul, the city nested ten miles out on the broad river plain at the base of the big mountain. Like the edge of the world. Midday, and the city was blanketed under a greasy diesel haze, trembling in the mirage like a beaten dog. Correa lay shirtless on his cot, tent walls up, air flowing through, one hand across his forehead, the other punched into his waistband listlessly palpating his scrotum. A screaming C-5 lifted off the airfield on a long arc and leveled south.

Pakistan? Who knows, and who gives a fuck. His head hurt. Some loudmouthed white chick in one of the women’s quarters was too far off for Correa to understand what she said, but her upspeak and vocal fry was annoying the shit out of him. He sat up and sucked water from his Camelbak, washing down the bitter tablets of boredom and rage.

A sullen wind throbbed down from the Hindu Kush. A guy-line on the detachment tent groaned as each gust from the big mountain swept noxious drafts over him of chemical “lavender” and human shit from the train of twenty Porta Potties lining the northern edge of Main Street—an ironically named alley running straight as a chalked boundary between an enormous complex of troops tents, dusty fortified buildings, and Conex containers. Generators buzzed, some near, some far, the neural exchanges powering this massive base squatting like an alien city-state on the semi-arid plateau.

A lone and distant dust devil careened over a wadi toward Jalalabad Highway. Vultures slid and soared to the east, drawn by the steady supply of garbage dumped on the downwind edge of the base. And those black and white birds with the long tails roosting in thick rows along the electric cables. He didn’t know what they were called, but he wished he had a pellet pistol. Pop those fuckers. Watch them drop.

Baby Doc sat on his cot in the front in the tent, whisking an oiled shaving brush over the receiver of his rifle.

Bobby and Captain Bob sat facing each other on folding chairs across a camp table, playing spades against Fall and Chief. Bobby dealt the cards with little snaps. Fall spat Copenhagen juice into a warm, half-empty Sprite can.

Woof pitched a football in the middle of Main Street with Eddy, the only remaining detachment engineer since Gene Pollard had been killed the night before last.

Sis sat on a foot locker across from Opie, the latter with a repertoire of facial tics that would put Žižek to shame. They played dominoes on a camp table.

Everyone killing time. The whole Task Force on some kind of lockdown over Pollard. And “the mission,” of course.

Lucky break for Correa, Pollard. Now that fucking coño couldn’t come apart like a two-dollar shirt in front of some pus-gutted CID agent. Pollard had been whining like a little bitch even before this so-called mission. Ready to break . . . or run his fucking mouth. This was Afghanistan. The law here was what you can get away with. At least Gene Pollard couldn’t break now. Because Gene was boarding a plane in a box. You don’t have friends in war. You have fucking associates.

Was it one or two days before the mission? The times tangled together in Correa’s head like a pile of dirty clothes. The Hajji bitches down in Zama? Come on. People died by the truckload in this fucking shithole every day. Keep quiet, and time pours it all into a canyon of forgetfulness. Buddha stuff. What ends up nothing can’t mean something.

And that sangano Task Force commander with his re-invention of this rat-fuck of a mission! They should’ve aborted the minute that batshit crazy team daddy disappeared. Who the fuck could’ve dreamed? Now Colonel Thomas was telling the press it was like this splendid achievement or some shit. Spinning it like Clayton Kershaw. Lying like a reptile.

*

Detachment 6246 assembled on orders from Colonel Boyd Thomas, Task Force Commander. Shuffling wordlessly into the S-2 Briefing Room, the team encountered eleven folding chairs behind eleven stacks of paper placed carefully on two rows of six-foot folding tables. Each stack of paper was accompanied by a plain black government pen.

Dropping their chest rigs, MICH helmets, and weapons on the shelves inside the door, each man covered down behind a set of paperwork. Twenty-two boots trundled the plywood floor, the room smelling like dust, sweat, and apprehension.

Standing in the corner opposite the door was a stranger. Tall. Lean. A Major with no name tape. Wearing a sidearm on a pistol belt. Receding hair. Short chin under a thick black mustache. A deep scar ran from his right eyebrow along the top of his cheekbone and into his hairline. Right ear missing a slice off the top. Arms folded across his chest. Black hair growing on his ears and pushing up out of his tan t-shirt. Black hair covering his visible hand like a bear. Pure threat radiating from an unflinching grey-eyed gaze that seemed to be on every member of the Detachment at once, like a jaguar eyeing a herd of nervous javelinas.

Bobby Milano, ever the team morale NCO and comedian, started to crack a joke.

“Get ready to –”

“Shut the fuck up,” said the Major in the corner. His voice was hoarse and high, like a warning from a cat. He stepped away from the wall. “Gentlemen, there will only be one person talking here today.” Turning toward them. “None of you are him. Sit the fuck down and don’t touch anything until you’re told.”

He waited. They complied, Bobby still red in the face.

“Title 18 of the U.S. Code, Section 798, and the Defense Secrets Act of 1911 are both relevant to what you’re about to hear,” said the Major, accent ambiguously Southern. “I represent the Special Operations Command, the Joint Special Operations Command, the Department of the Army, and the Department of Defense.” Backlit by a broad blank whiteboard, he unfolded his arms and began a slow back and forth pace across the front of the room, baleful eyes still locked on the Detachment.

“Every action and item I cover here falls under those two laws. Each item, on its own, is worth a one thousand dollar fine and ten years in the Federal Confinement Facility at Fort Leavenworth. If I cover eight items, any disclosure of the covered items, item by item, will result in that fine and that length of imprisonment for each item. Sentences to be served consecutively. In other words, for those of you who are too fucking obtuse to follow the thread, if you disclose two things, you spend twenty years in the Federal Prison at Fort Leavenworth. If you disclose eight things, you will die shitting yourself in a six-by-twelve-foot cell. Any violations in this particular case will result in the absolute maximum punishment.”

He let that sink in, still creeping back and forth, boots lightly bumping the wood floor.

“Today,” he laid one paw on his chest, “I am the Man in Black.”

With each sentence, his voice rose a bit, like a tent revivalist warming to his own sermon or a musical score transitioning from woodwind to brass, pausing for a millisecond between each phrase for emphasis.

“Today, I will erase your memories of the last three days and replace them with newer, better memories.”

He stopped pacing.

“Let’s begin with Sergeant Pollard, may he rest in eternal fucking peace.”

He didn’t really sound like he meant that.

“Sergeant Pollard was killed by enemy fire, and not by one of you incompetent cunts. He was not killed by his own Special Forces Detachment as it blazed into the wrong house and gunned down an elderly Afghan couple in their fucking jammies. One of you,” he pointed, “oxygen-thieving turds did not shoot your senior engineer during a lethal panic attack. That’s item one.

“Item two.” Pacing again across the wooden floor, a percussion accompaniment.

“You did not go blazing into the wrong house and gun down an elderly Afghan couple in their PJs. You actually went into the correct house and killed your designated target, Usman Jahangiri, a high value Taliban intelligence chief. The elderly couple who was gunned down in their PJs was killed earlier that fateful night by the henchman of this vicious yet wily Taliban intelligence chief.

“Item three. Your mission was not to capture Usman Jahangiri. God fucking forbid. After all, why would ISAF want to interrogate this high value Taliban intelligence chief when we can just kill the raghead genius by pure accident on some dirt road and take a clumsy fucking photograph of his freshly beshitted corpse? If capturing Jahangiri were your mission, as you may think you fucking remember, then that would mean that you failed your mission. And Special Forces A-Detachments do not fail their missions because you are the steely-eyed, quiet professionals standing on the frontier between civilization and retrograde savagery. So, your mission, as members of the legendary Green Berets, was to kill this motherfucker instead of murdering an elderly Afghan couple.

“Item three. You did not accidentally encounter and kill the target of this operation, Usman Jahangiri, as he came bumbling down the aforesaid thoroughfare with two sleepy-eyed and inept bodyguards after you went blazing into the wrong house and gunned down an elderly Afghan couple. Indeed, you went directly to Jahangiri’s domicile and killed this camel-fucking genius on purpose.

“Item four. Your team sergeant, Master Sergeant Abner Parker Dale, may he also rest easy and eternally in the arms of our beloved fucking lord, did not lose his motherfucking mind and somehow extricate himself from the mission in the middle of the night, only to disappear into the wild and hostile reaches of our fair host nation. Therefore, he could not have been shot to death by unknown Afghani assailants in a Kabul market one motherfucking day later.

“Not one of you or any member of your entire alleged chain of command took note that this man was having a psychotic break. That is because he did not have the aforesaid psychotic break, and he did not leave the mission in the middle of the night to be shot dead by unknown hajji fucking assailants in downtown Kabul. No, indeed. Master Sergeant Dale died bravely, under withering fire, as he, with you all, faced down a crack unit of at least twenty . . . maybe . . . thirty Taliban fighters who were protecting Usman Jahangiri when you accomplished your mission to kill the vicious yet wily Taliban intelligence chief.

“Item five. Both Dale and Pollard will be receiving posthumous Silver Stars for their valor in action, and you will, by God, memorize the accompanying narratives for those awards. You will do so because that goddamn narrative is also your goddamn narrative, should you, dare I fucking say it, have the bad judgement to tell anyone anything about this blue-ribbon shit show of a mission.”

Spit came out of him when he said that.

“Item six. On the day before this blue-ribbon shit show of a mission, which has now been revised in your memories to reflect a narrative that features actual professional soldiers, you received a briefing from your Public Affairs Officer, the esteemed Major Carroll, who told you of a perfidious French reporter investigating the rape and murder of a young girl and her mother not far from here. The locals have insisted that the assailants were American soldiers, not unlike yourselves, who also, not unlike yourselves, were purported to have on more than one occasion left this secure compound on unauthorized nocturnal forays. Some of these forays, it is rumored, were to get your tiny pedophilic cocks wet as the clientele of a Chinese pimp trafficking pre-pubescent poontang in the fair capital city of Kabul.

“No one has presented any evidence to confirm this story of rape and murder. And the aforementioned commie-ass frog reporter was subsequently killed outside his hotel by a Taliban car bomb. Praise God from whom all blessings flow.

“However, the proximity in time and space of this incident to your blue-ribbon shit show of a mission has raised embarrassing and even politically sensitive questions. This dysfunctional and discipline-free Detachment that sits before me, then, has hereby had any memory whatsoever of these allegations or the aforementioned briefing erased. I am Will Smith, the Man in Black, and I just flashed a fucking neurolizer in your sad fucking faces.”

Bobby struggled not to laugh, harder because he knew it would be a catastrophic error.

“Item seven. While we are on the subject of inconvenient coincidence, a coincidence which makes American forces look like criminals at best, and monkeys copulating with your granny’s throw pillows at worst, you may have heard, or may yet hear, that two of our erstwhile, overpaid, macho, mercenary cunts from XYY Security—an aptly named and miscreant collection of extortionate and unaccountable cocksuckers—were found dead in Kabul alongside the aforesaid Chinese pimp, who was likewise found to be—praise the Lord—as dead as the first gerbil you shoved up your ass during group homosexual encounters.”

Bobby faced the floor and opened his mouth really wide to prevent himself laughing.

“Do you have a fucking problem, Sergeant Milano?”

“No sir.” Bobby was red again when he looked up.

“Good, because you really cannot make this shit up, gentlemen. But as I said, my sources suggest that members of the dysfunctional and discipline-free Detachment sitting before me now may have been clients of said Chinese pimp and his convocation of under-aged pussy.

“Apart from the fact that I am at this very moment fantasizing about summary execution authority, in which case, I would happily shoot every goddamn pedophilic one of you through your disorderly black hearts, this rumor of Special Forces soldiers frequenting baby bordellos during unauthorized nocturnal forays is no longer true, and will—like the items preceding—be neuralized from your miniscule, mis-wired, and prurient fucking brains.

“Item eight, gentlemen. You will not speak of this mission, this briefing, or even my physical description to anyone, ever. Not to your girlfriend while she is charitably pretending to gag on your tiny little dick. Not to your secret twinky boyfriend while he’s tenderly fucking you up the ass. Not to your baby-raping priest. Not to your hippy dippy New Age PTSD therapist. Because you have no memory of these things and therefore cannot possibly describe them no matter the circumstance.

“So . . . although I would earnestly like to see several of you being repeatedly sodomized by a fellow inmate named Rollo for the rest of your wretched fucking lives in a dank and joyless prison, gentlemen, you can thank your lucky fucking stars, that there are greater issues to attend to here.

“Given that the wondrous and media-fueled mystique of special operations competence serves as a deterrent, a deterrent to all those depraved actors around the world who oppose the interests of the United States of America, the providential city on the motherfucking hill; and given that the actions of this Detachment, and the circumstances surrounding those actions, would serve to dissolve that mystique into a bubbling pile of infectious shit, revealing the depths of craven stupidity that sometimes lies beneath that coveted green beret; and given that said depraved actors, upon learning that weak-minded excrement . . . such as yourselves . . . have managed to slip past all of the armed forces systems for selection and assessment, and, by some defiance of every law of probability in the known universe, been assigned to the same Special Forces A-Detachment . . . given all this, those hostile actors might feel emboldened to take further actions against our fair and providential nation. And so, we have arrived at an unlikely latitude and longitude wherein covering your sorry asses with this elaborate fucking fiction has become a priority, and which it has been my repugnant duty to explain here today.

“Now, go through your paperwork, page by page . . . wait until I am finished! Go through your paperwork, page by page, and fill out every goddamn block. Sign every goddamn signature block. Then leave the completed forms in a goddamn stack like you found them, collect your shit, and get the fuck out of my sight . . . stop, I am not finished yet!

“This team, as of day after tomorrow, will no longer exist in its current form. Each of you alleged soldiers will be reassigned within 6th Special Forces Group. Other brave and quiet professionals like your retrofitted selves, will be reassigned from different Detachments to replace you in the re-formation and rehabilitation of Detachment 6246. None of you will be co-assigned. I suggest, furthermore, that for the rest of your lives you stay the fuck away from one another. I will not be taking any questions. You may now, upon completion of your paperwork, which you will leave there for your S-2 officer to collect, return to your quarters, inspect and inventory every piece of equipment, and pack your shit.” He walked across the room—thump, thump, thump—opened the door and left, slamming it shut behind him.

*

The detachment packed. Bobby broke the silence.

“My dick’s not tiny.” The tent rippled with the reprieve of laughter. “Major no-name has a pretty good vocabulary, though.”

“And vivid imagery,” said Sis.

Eddy snorted, “Fuckin’ gerbils?”

2

Rockfish, North Carolina
April 13, 2013

“Dad,” she called from the bathroom. “I’m on my period.”

“Lotta information, Poppy,” he called from his home office. It was his weekend.

She came out. Punk-pixey black-haired adolescent in floral gym pants and white tunic. Goofy cat-eye glasses resting far out on her nose.

“I only got one pad left.”

“You only have one pad left,” he corrected, turning back to his computer. “Want me to get some?”

“It’s okay,” she said, entering the office. “Let me have some money, and I’ll walk down to Hardin’s.”

He fished in his wallet. Held up a twenty between two fingers. Tapped something into a spreadsheet with his left hand. “That enough?”

“Yep, can I get a Sun Drop?”

“Sure, I’ll put that in my notes, though, and add it to your future dental bills.”

“Har-de-har,” she said. “Back in twenty. Years.”

“Adieu à ma fille. See you when you’re thirty-four. Conserve that cash.”

“Adios, old dude.”

*

It was 9:15 a.m., fifty degrees and sunny. Wearing her blue-gray sherpa jacket, Poppy walked west along King Road, Hardin’s Express Stop already in view across Rockfish Road. A lifted-axle four-door white Silverado slowed, the driver’s window sliding down. GI in civilian clothes, blonde, military mustache, big smile. With no traffic to the rear, he stopped in the road.

“Can you help me out here,” he called.

“Yes, sir,” Poppy said with a squint.

“I’m lookin’ for Jumpin’ Java, s’posed to meet a friend there. Know where it is?”

“Oh, mister, you’re way away from there. That’s up in Fayetteville, off four-oh-one.”

“Hang on a second,” he said, “it’s really important I meet this guy.”

He pulled off on the shoulder. Left the engine running and dismounted. Came around to the passenger side. “I got a map in here. Can you show me?” He opened the door.

Poppy hesitated. Looked around. Broad daylight, with passing cars on Rockfish Road not 200 feet away.

“Maybe,” she said, approaching. “I’m not great with maps, though. You got your phone, right?”

“I’m not very good with phones,” he smiled.

When she glanced inside the truck, the blow came, the world gone swimmy and black.

*

Fayetteville, North Carolina
April 15, 2013

Finnian’s Bait and Tackle was just south of Cliffdale Road. Bruce Hicks was Dave Finnian’s son-in-law. Dave stumbled on nowadays, his diabetes raging and his lungs folding after sixty years of two packs a day, so Bruce ran the store. Bruce’s wife, Mollee, did the books. Their grown kids had shown up for Mollee’s birthday on Saturday, and he’d closed at five, leaving the clean-up for this morning. He arrived at 5:40 a.m. to get everything ship-shape before opening at eight. He swept and mopped, then dumped the trash from each room into a single heavy-duty 20-gallon bag. Out back, he shared a dingy green ten-yard dumpster with Freeman’s Pet Supply next door. He opened the can and started to heave.

He sprang back, tripped, and fell. He didn’t even notice his left palm, bleeding from seeds of broken glass. He rose, looking cautiously back inside the can, and gave a little cry.

She was naked from the waist down. White tunic top. Black hair forming a ghastly halo around the ruined, battered face. Her young body was unnaturally doubled and bent, ribboned in dry black blood, a bloody silver-gray jacket dropped across her feet.

3

Luce County, Michigan
July 19, 2025

“What’s up, everybody! Grady here.” Caldwell breathes audibly at the camera on the end of the selfie stick. “Welcome to another episode of my podcast, Hike-n-Hook. We’re in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan today, headed to the Little Two Hearted Lakes. Just me, the backpack, and our hiking trailer with today’s sponsor, Seaeagle’s Packfkish7 inflatable, one-man fishing boat. I’m hoofing it for what looks to be three more miles. Local rumor says this seldom fished lake-chain is loaded with monstrous Northern pike.”

Cut. Collapse the stick. Stow the camera.

Sweat beads on his forehead. A cloud of mosquitoes surrounds his head, held off in the last instant by a force-field of lemon eucalyptus oil. The hike trailer weighs thirty-three pounds, the inflatable twenty-nine, and his backpack with all his food, water, and fishing tackle is another thirty-five. But Caldwell’s a former lacrosse player from Neenah, Wisconsin. He’s twenty-six and fit.

His GPS quit working west of County 500, so he relies on a page from an old Plat Book Land Atlas. The trail ahead plunges down to a creek. He’s curious to see if it holds enough water to support a few trout. He thinks he sees a hole to the south that could accommodate a few little ones. He drops his pack next to the hand trailer and starts picking through the thickets. A snarl of deadfall forces him to his right and onto a small sandy ridge. That’s when he sees the rusty pole sticking up from a flood-tangle of sun-bleached wood.

Peering down into the shadows, he sees the oxidized receiver. An old shotgun. He climbs up and balances on a knot of whitened limbs and tries to wiggle it loose, losing his balance and crashing onto a small sandy draw, elbow banging hard on a solid surface.

“Shit!”

A bone. Big bone. He stands and brushes himself. Deer? Bear? Elk? Moose? More bones further up. He steps over a fallen cedar bough for a closer look. Down among the bone litter, surrounded by sandy bits of camouflage-pattern rag, a human skull separated from its jaw.

4

Northern Michigan
September 15, 2021

They rode a gray, seven-year-old, two-seat Tacoma pickup with a black shell. Enormous ravens patrolled the highway like sentries along the thick forests and shimmering beaver marshes. Wheeling above, against the blue sky, a kettle of turkey vultures searched for roadkill. Deangela was headed North on M-123 to Newberry.

The passenger’s bucket seat was matted in dog hair. Isis was asleep there now. Not the Salafi army, but Deangela’s five-year-old border collie-sheltie. A half-breed like me, she’d sometimes joke, but she felt no levity today. Grief’s icy tentacles threaded through her heart. Theodora was gone. Buried the day before yesterday.

Theodora Hall had been Deangela’s childhood homeschool teacher, her mentor, her friend. Deangela was carrying her sorrow now to her late father’s fishing camp. Daddy had died in combat eleven years ago in Afghanistan, and this fresh loss had reanimated the older one. Time to face it, to bathe in this dismaying absence. Rewind it. Allow it to cut away at her until the sharpest edges were worn off. Hiding from heartbreak, she knew from harsh experience, was a dangerous form of procrastination.

The Shamrock it was named, their camp. Fifty minutes out of Newberry along the East Branch of the Two Hearted River. A fishery that would likely be lost to climate crisis within two decades, something else about which she’d rather not think. Melting polar ice, weather pattern disruptions, how what she’d heretofore believed would go untouched, turned out to be wrong. Everything ramifying into something dry, lightless, and lifeless, held together and redeemed only by some ineffable and seemingly untouchable thread of eternity. Bleak and terrible thoughts stirred themselves into her raw grief. Her head was a hamster wheel, her heart a cold grey stone.

They’d just passed through the little town of Trout Lake. Approaching the M-28 intersection, she hit an obnoxious series of rumble strips that jarred her bladder and roused Isis from sleep. Isis licked the air a few times, cut her eyes at Deangela, and sat up to run her nose along the passenger window. They pulled off next to a county trail junction. Walked back into the trees to relieve themselves.

Sunday today. Her mother would attend ten-thirty Mass soon.

Deangela let Isis back in the truck and tapped “Mama” into the phone.

“Sweetbread!” Farah answered.

“Hi, Mama.”

“Where ya be, Pick.”

“Just on twenty-eight. Hour and change from the camp.”

“How ya di do, love?” (a Belizean how are you)

If Farah hadn’t asked, Deangela wouldn’t feel like crying. I’m ravaged, poured out. Life is a dirty trick, a bait and switch of love and death.

“Okay, Mama. I’m okay.”

“Don’ lie, Pick. I’m ya mama.”

“How’re you, Mama?”

“I’m sad. And worried. Ya all alone there.”

“I have Isis.”

“Be careful on that river, Pick. Heartsick make ya careless.”

“I will, Mama. Be careful, not worry you. Slept like shit last night in the truck, so I’ll just sort out the camp today. Scare off the mice. Take a nap.”

“How’s the weather?”

“Clear. Warmer’n it oughta be.”

A lone loud tractor-trailer truck howled past.

“Call me when ya can, Sweetbread.”

“I will, Mama.”

*

Farah Dale had reason to worry about her daughter. After Deangela’s father was killed in the war, Deangela had lost her own war at the university.

Then she lost her way.

At eighteen, Deangela had finished her first semester of grad school at Carolina, a child prodigy with fifteen minutes of fame. Bachelor of Philosophy already in hand, Deanglea was a campus legend. One who defied every conceivable stereotype for a biracial late adolescent. Philosophy, a “male” major. Sport, orienteering (not only a “white” sport, but right up with broomball in popularity and recognition). And her feral, intergenerational, homeschool upbringing had failed to synchronize her with pop culture. Fashion and sexual codes in particular. She clothing shopped in second-hand stores. She refused razors and makeup. Between her mother’s Belizean inflections and her father’s peculiar white Southern upbringing—and not having attended an actual school until she was fourteen—she’d assimilated neither youth culture’s frenetic search for cool nor the petit bourgeois obsession of up-and-coming American racial minorities with respectability and compulsive cleanliness. She was spread all across boundaries, maybe more thinly than she always liked, but there it was.

Abner (her father) and Farah had found a ready audience in their prodigy for discussions of all manner of things. Deanglea memorized countless names, lists, taxonomies, and three and a half languages—English, Spanish, Belizean Creole—and some of the Garifuna that was dying with the elders. By age ten, she was unbeatable at Trivial Pursuit.

“American watersheds that begin with A.”

“Acequia Madre, ACF, ACT, Alaska Water Resource, Arkansas White-Red.”

White paternal Southern family, taken by politics and madness. Her maternal family, chicken-raising black beach peasants. And so, Deangela had grown up with a combination of intergenerational trust and racial naiveté.

That naiveté left her unprotected from University of North Carolina Assistant Professor of Philosophy David Ryan.

5

University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
May 12, 2009

“They’re the same,” Deangela told him, only because class participation was a grading criterion.

She felt like an impostor, despising grades as much as she depended upon them. She especially despised “class participation.” Give me a good lecture any day, she thought. A well-conceived thesis, expounded systematically, and ingested anonymously. Class participation made her feel like a subjugated hound compelled to speak — “Woof!” — for her Bubba Rose biscuit.

Dr. Ryan knitted his brow reflectively. His weirdly small hand tugged at the gold bead in his earlobe. A sleeve-mosaic forearm tattoo peeked out from his shirt cuffs. He displayed his gym-bod by jogging around campus in his tank top and nylon shorts, all that hard-won sinew rippling under elaborate, vaguely tribal tattoos. Women rewarded him with the attention, for sure. Some men, too. Thirty-nine, prematurely gray, long classic face framed in a rebellious beard and a bad-boy buzzcut.

To Deangela? Peacock. It was animus at first sight on the first day of class this semester. Western Moral Philosophy. Level-four, first-year graduate course. Finals in a week, thank God. She concealed her contempt for Ryan, in part because she wasn’t altogether sure why she detested him so intensely. He was a genuinely knowledgeable and skilled teacher as well as a publishing juggernaut on a fast track to tenure. Brain muscles to match the anatomy. But she abhorred grandstanders, men full of themselves, and she couldn’t overcome the suspicion that there was some lightless toxic void beneath Ryan’s freewheeling hip performance.

He was courteous, even deferential to her — the odd girl. She had to admit. She was unsure in herself about this revulsion because it felt so personal, her ambivalence an inheritance from her mother’s syncretic Caribbean Catholicism. (Or so she’d theorized.)

Cool damp air drifted in through the classroom windows. She smelled fried food. Heard a barely audible conversation about avian flu from the sidewalk one floor below. Listened to birds. Scavenging house sparrows. A blue jay mimicking a hawk. Robins on the hunt. Her attention drifted while Ryan waited for his answer. She turned her grudging attention back to the senescent classroom and the underwear-model with the impatient gaze.

Challenging him was irresistible. The question had been, “What are the key differences between Rawls and Nozick?” Her response—“They are the same.”—an open provocation, cribbed from having read MacIntyre’s After Virtue in preparation for class. Ryan leaned back against his desk, arms crossed, waiting for her reply.

He’s posing, she thought, like one of those lizards that fans its throat to attract a mate.

Her fellow students turned. What say you, mutant child?

Philosophy grad students can be tedious, she thought, eyes sweeping the room. Not “tedious of the twice-told tale.” More like the confabulated tale, or the overprocessed tale, or the agonizingly arcane tale. Even within the closed system of their terminal geekdom, there were power struggles and dominance displays that gave her visions of stags pissing on each other’s territory and crashing their antlers into saplings. There sat the diminutive, horn-rimmed James who crushed on the prim Methodist Angela, oft quoting a virile Nietzsche against his rival — the prematurely and attractively balding David — who cleaved to a more effeminate Kant. Then there was her, with her ill-attended, tangled hair, her tattered trousers, and dirty boots. She appeared at times to be someone who lived in the woods on locusts and wild honey. No makeup. Brows dense and unplucked. Rumors that she didn’t shave.

(Come on, hirsute was okay for a stoned, aging hippie woman hula-hooping in front of Weaver Street Market, but in grad school, on this eighteen-year-old, it suggested carelessness, or cluelessness, or both. Sometimes she’d show up in dirty clothes, wearing those muddy Danners, looking not like a Carrboro hula-hooper but someone who’d just stolen a carcass from a pack of hyenas. And yet, the whole campus had heard the apocryphal claim that she’d read Tolstoy when she was nine.)

She glanced out the window, distracted again by the blue jay.

“Go on,” said Ryan impatiently.

She turned her eyes back to him and sat up straight, wiping hair away from her face only to have it fall back.

“Well, they’re both anti-Aristotelian, aren’t they? They both define every person as a detached agent, as someone without history or culture.” Her voice was her mother’s — fruit and whiskey, Macy Gray. She picked at the edge of a book while she talked, eyes switching from book to Ryan to book again. “Then a group of these rootless guys gets together to form rules for a common good.” Pausing again, she rubbed her index finger in short repetitive strokes over the surface of her desk, like she was crossing something out again and again, her eyes aimed downward now as she retransmitted some distant voice. “They only disagree on the basis for establishing rules based on competing origin myths . . .” Her hand stopped moving, her gaze on Ryan again. “. . . Rawls with his amnesiac veil of ignorance and Nozick with an Adamic figure emerging full-grown from a cabbage [the class tittered] and yet somehow linguistically competent . . . who picks up pretty shells on the beach and establishes the institution of property.” Right index finger now poking at two points on the desk, back and forth like a metronome. “But they both assume the possibility of universal norms apart from any named tradition. They both consider male as normative and ignore that this male normativity, along with the other social goods they narrate, isn’t universal at all, but the brainchild of the Atlantic bourgeois history of which both Rawls and Nozick are themselves products.” Ryan steepled his knobby little fingers as she continued. “Both of them are elaborately begging the question, arguing from a historically contingent status quo, then asserting that what they’ve already accepted is universal. They disagree only on some particulars about the basis for justice within that status quo. There’s your distinction. But they’re both just proposing decorative rationalizations for liberal modernity.”

She held his gaze for a moment, then looked down at her desk, mad-woman hair falling back over her face. The other eight members of class gawked. Seven were men, so maybe the gender dig got their attention.

Ryan stroked his beard a couple of times, then stood, smiling broadly, perfect teeth eerily white against a suspiciously early tan. He walked a half circle to face the class from behind his desk.

“Okay,” he said, turning to pick up a dry erase marker and giving his back to the class. Did he just lat-flare? He made an R and circled it, then an N and circled that, too. “Let’s talk about these competing notions of justice.”

When the clock ran out on class, the students gathered their books and papers. Out the door they went: Steve, the mustachioed and determined local International Socialist who passed out his annoying newspapers and thought all life began with Hegel; Randall, the heavy one who wore Hawaiian shirts tucked in like an old man and always reeked of Axe cologne; Angela, the Methodist (Why wasn’t she going to Duke?); bespectacled David — James’s nemesis . . .

“Have you got a moment, Deangela?” Ryan asked, stopping her.

Ryan believed he had a special sensibility about women, especially young ones. He’d sensed from the first day that this girl needed the kind of affirmation he might give her; that she camouflaged her feelings of attraction with this odd, Aspergerish compulsion to confront. She was undoubtedly brilliant, which had its own allure, kindling within him the ambition to domesticate her like an exotic animal.

He’d peered beneath her ratty clothes (another camouflage for her own desire, he speculated). She was well-muscled, wiry, quite fit. No matter how she dressed, she couldn’t hide that hard little ass, the muscular calves, the almost boyish small swell of her breasts. Even her reputed refusal to shave beguiled him, like a counterpoint to the young women he’d been with who all seemed to have undergone full-body waxes. He liked that — the smooth infantile thing; but he liked variety, too. Deangela Dale was undeniably variant.

She waited with Ryan while the rest filed out. James, Angela’s horn-rimmed Zarathustra, out the door; Déshì, from Taiwan; and finally, as always, Andrei, the enormous and phlegmatic second-generation Russian, who gave a kind of bow and mock salute to Deangela as he made his exit.

She faced Ryan alone now, all five-foot-four of her angled up at his six, daypack slung on her shoulder in readiness for a swift escape. Ryan canted back against the desk again, the backs of his legs now propped against the edge to put him and Deangela at eye level, his legs intrusively stretched out toward hers.

“Deangela, you’re going to make your mark on philosophy, I expect. Have you thought about your future? Do you know about our Parr Fellowship?” She didn’t reply. There’s that Asperger thing again, he figured, so he powered through. “I’ve looked at your final paper.”

“Okay?” She shifted her pack higher on her shoulder.

“Interesting choice. ‘Wittgenstein and the Body’.”

“It’s an interesting topic . . . to me.” She tugged with her free hand at one of her anarchic locks, stretching it and letting it pop back. “Is the paper okay?”

He saw that flicker. Of doubt? Of interest beyond the paper? The need for approval? The hair thing. Maybe a pleasure signal?

“I’d like to talk with you about it.”

“I have to go. I have a meeting.” She glanced at the door then back at him. He smiled again. He looked into her black-coffee eyes then shifted his gaze to her mouth.

“Not now, of course. I have office hours this afternoon from three to five. Can you drop by?” She did a little two-step with her head down, then looked up again.

“Orienteering club.”

He cocked his head like a hawk, still staring at her mouth, full like ripe plums.

“Really? What got you interested in orienteering?”

“My father,” she answered, offering no more and ducking her head.

“Well, how about tomorrow then? Do you have half an hour or so in the morning?”

“Between ten and twelve,” she said.

Her eyes skated from the window to the door, to her feet and back at Ryan. He stroked his beard like he was milking it, hands slight, narrow, and knob-knuckled. Like a squirrel’s hands. Incongruous at the ends of his veined, tattooed forearms and the slabs of gym flesh under his shirt. He could bulk up all he wanted, but his hands betrayed a sly, skinny boy peering furtively out from behind all that sweaty, Pelagian sinew.

“Excellent. Can you meet me on the way to work, at, say, eleven?”

“Where?”

“The Mediterranean? They have good coffee.” Finally, something with which she could agree.

“Yes. Do I need to bring a copy of the paper?”

“If you like.” She stood silent.

“Then I’ll see you at eleven. Don’t be late for your meeting.”

6

Uncertainty pummeled her like a red storm. Was something wrong with the paper? Had she confronted him one too many times? Was he hitting on her? The subject matter was easy for her, God knows. Frozen as text, dissectible as grammar and logic. These people, though, at university. Fucking worm bins of contradictory lacks and competing agendas. Grammars she hadn’t mastered. She didn’t know the rules, even as she appreciated that there was a great deal at stake with them. Her gifts were of no use to her here.

She raked over the conversation with Ryan, searching for clues.

A comment like, “You’re going to make your mark”?

Was it intellectual flattery, or was he hinting at something else, some project? And why did that frisson of revulsion ripple across her skin when he gazed at her, stroking his fucking beard? Was that leer into her eyes just his way, or was he going for soulful? And why did he stare at her mouth? Hated that! All these indecipherable performances.

Why was she so suspicious of him? Why did she feel patronized? What in the hell was this meeting with him over the paper? Thank God this class was nearly over.

She pushed open the door to the Student Union. Ian, Brett, and Oliver, the other members of the orienteering team, were already seated around one of the coffee tables studying the map for an Umstead Park competition next week.

*

Chapel Hill, North Carolina

Deangela heard dishes bumping in suds when she opened the apartment door. Samantha leaned over the kitchen sink. Deangela tossed her daypack onto the tattered olive love seat in the corner.

“Hiya,” said Samantha without looking up from the dishes.

“Hey, Sam.”

The apartment smelled like hot yeast and rosemary. Deangela flopped onto a backless garnet divan. The cushion sank precipitously on broken springs. Deangela unlaced her hikers, then fought her way back out of the sinkhole to set her boots on the white plastic shoe stand by the door. Sat back down.

“Sam,” Deangela said. “Got a minute?”

“What’s up?” Sam called from the kitchen. She slotted the last plate in the drainer and wiped her hands on a tea towel. Deangela massaged her own feet. Sam dropped the dish towel on the DVD player by the little television, and sat on the old brown love seat.

“Something happened in Ryan’s class today. Is that bread I smell?”

“Yeah. Mixed it last night. Dutch oven with rosemary.” Accent: Western North Carolina white-girl. Led people to underestimate her. Might serve her well as an attorney.

“Mmm.” Deangela felt a stab of hunger.

“So, what’s up?” asked Sam.

“Dr. Ryan stopped me after class.”

“Oh, shit.”

“What?”

“Well, I wondered if you’d get a pass or not,” Sam said, stroking her hair back with both hands and pulling it through a scrunchy.

“A pass?”

“Hit on ya, didn’t he?”

“That’s just it. I don’t know. But it’s kinda dark you just went there.”

“Guy’s a walkin’ hard-on. Everybody knows. Likes to fuck his grad students.” Sam was direct if nothing else. “What happened?”

Deangela recounted the conversation. “Says he needs to meet me about my final paper at Med Deli. Tomorrow. I mean, meeting in the Med’s safe, right? And he might really wanna talk about my paper.”

“Hmm,” Sam went back to the kitchen. Deangela got up to follow. Sam put the tea kettle on and pulled two cups down from the cupboard, one from a local bookstore and one from UNC Law School where Sam pursued her juris doctorate.

“Want tea?”

“Sure. Darjeeling. Black.”

Sam bent to retrieve the tea bags from a floor cabinet. Her ginger frizz came loose from the scrunchy again. She grunted against her own girth. Sam was big-boned, boxy, sturdy, and self-assured in her own skin. Deangela, for all her redoubtable intellect, was eighteen and still casting around to figure out how she wanted to be. Sam was nine years her senior. She very much wanted whatever it was that Sam had — that self-accepting poise.

“De, sweetie, you might be the smartest person at this University . . .”

“Sam, I—”

“Just a sec, you know what I mean. Hell, you might the smartest person in the whole fuckin’ state, for all anyone knows.” She put her hair back in the scrunchie. “What was your GPA?”

“Four plus, but—”

“No buts, De.” Sam’s ice blue eyes, her maternal affection. “You know as well as I do that your paper, whatever it’s about, is prob’ly publishable.”

Deangela looked down. Picked at a callus on her palm. “Okay, yeah” Deangela said, looking up again at Sam, “but I don’t wanna jump to conclusions because I dislike him. I might be projecting, ya know. I mean, I’m not some campus diva. I’m nerd-girl. Nerd squared. I don’t have pheromones, I secrete footnotes.”

“You ain’t gotta [air quotes] signal Ryan,” Sam said. “Guy like him, you’re exotic. Little hard-body brown girl? Ryan’s probably intimidated, too. Half his age and already runnin’ circles ’round him. That inferiority complex, and your being a teenage female . . . sets a match to his tinder. Guy’s a cockhound.” Deangela laughed at that. “A control monkey, a fuckin’ trophy collector, and he does Not. Like. Women. Thinks he’ll be in control once he gets you to spasm on his little pudenda-poker.” Deangela laughed again, louder. “That’s his little power fantasy, your humiliation. He’s a creep, and danglin’ a paper in front of you, hot damn, sexual harassment, hello?”

“You sure?”

“Prima facie? Nah. But you hear alarm bells, you fuckin’ listen.”

The kettle whistled. Sam got up, cut the flame, and spattered hot water over the teabags. She handed Deangela her tea. Picked up her own. Deangela retreated to the love seat. Sam followed, blowing across the top of her cup.

“Okay, what constitutes sexual harassment?” Deangela asked. “You’re the law student.”

7

Chapel Hill, North Carolina
May 13, 2009

An unusually warm mid-May day in downtown Chapel Hill, eighty by 10 a.m. Last night’s drizzle left steamy moisture along the seams of the streets. Damp heat rose thick from the hardscapes and ripened the dumpsters.

Deangela was running late. She threw on the same pair of baggy green trousers she’d worn the day before and a freshly washed, oversize t-shirt emblazoned with “The Beatles.” Two-dollar swag from Club Nova Thrift Shop. A red bandana pushed her hair back into a minor explosion, airing out a pebbling of mild acne along the northern boundary of her forehead.

At 10:50 a.m. she left the apartment and walked southeast to jump off Basnight Lane to Cameron. A long cut, hooking around onto Robertson to take Franklin. Kenan was shorter, but she’d been verbally accosted there once from less than thirty feet away by a tribe of drunken frat rats—white guys hooting “brown sugar” at her while they squeezed their crotches and fixed her with malicious alcoholic gazes that thrust into her belly like unwelcome fingers. She never went up Kenan again. Ever.

The Mediterranean fed an early lunch crowd. Entering, she was engulfed by air-conditioning and the commingled aromas of coffee, grilled meat, and hummus. Her mouth watered. Ryan was near the back of the room at a tiny round table between the dessert display cases. Jeans with no belt. Loafers with no socks. Gray polo shirt. Grinning like they were old chums, his gaze aimed at her across a steaming coffee clutched in his knobby little hand.

She dropped her daypack onto the chair opposite and said hi.

“Hi, Deangela. Need anything?”

“Yes, Doctor Ryan, give me a minute please. Gonna get some food. Haven’t eaten.”

“David, please,” he said, shifting side-saddle and slinging a sensitive smile her way. “In graduate school we’re colleagues.”

“David. I’ll be back in a minute.”

“Take your time.” Staring at her mouth again. What the hell!

She ordered a lamb and beef gyro. Lutfi, the youngest son in the family business, a slender Palestinian with big eyes and a day’s growth of thick black beard, told her he’d call her when it was ready. She returned to her seat, unzipped her Bean pack, put a water bottle on the table, and extracted the folder with her paper. Set it next to the bottle. Re-zipped the pack. Plopped it on the floor. Scooted the plastic chair back and squared up to face him.

Ryan crossed one leg over the other, draping his left arm over the seat back. Tipped his coffee back to drain the cup, exhaling a puff of steam. Parked the empty cup on the table. Wiped his mouth with the back of his knobby fucking claw, eyes all the while fixed on her mouth.

“Have I got something in my teeth?” she asked.

“What?”

“You keep looking at my mouth.” Ryan dropped his leg back to the floor and his eyes to the table. He flexed out his dismay and interlaced his rat fingers. She was seized briefly by thoughts of fleas and plague.

“Do I?” he asked disingenuously.

“Yes.”

He looked around the restaurant then faced her again, forearms on the table, causing it to rock on uneven legs and almost toppling her water bottle. Deangela caught the bottle and placed it firmly on the floor. You can theoretically stand a pencil on its point, she thought distractedly, but standing a marble in a bowl is a stable solution. Principle of self-organization.

“Sorry,” he said. She wasn’t sure whether this was in reference to the bottle or staring at her mouth. “Nice save,” he said. She looked at him. “The bottle.”

“You said you wanted to talk about my paper.”

Before Ryan could reply, Lutfi called, “DeDe, you’re up.”

“Excuse me.”

“Course.” Ryan felt he had to regroup. He’d read that women were more sexually susceptible if you didn’t face them directly. Makes you appear needy when you mirror. That they somehow experienced an erotic sub-current when men looked at their mouths. Wrong-footed now, he wondered if perhaps her autism made her the exception.

When she returned, she dropped her paper plate with the gyro on the table and scooted the chair back under her.

“You mind?” she asked, unwrapping the gyro.

“By all means, go ahead. Do you prefer DeDe or Deangela? I want you to feel as comfortable with me as I feel with you.”

She hesitated while unwrapping her food for a split second. An image of an angry possum chewing on a fence wire flashed through her mind. She inspected the contents of the gyro.

“Deangela,” she said. “About the paper?” She bit off a mouthful, dabbing cucumber sauce off the corner of her mouth with a paper napkin.

“Yes. The paper. Well, you were pretty hard on Kripke. He draws a distinction between metaphysical and epistemic possibility.”

God almighty, I’m exhausted by this already. She took a few seconds to chew and swallow, dabbing again with the crushed napkin.

“Not my issue, sir. He missed the mark. Tried to turn Wittgenstein into a skeptic.”

“I did a Master’s Thesis on Kripke,” he said, head tilted, eyebrows went up.

“On his reading of Wittgenstein?”

She took a swig of water to prep for another bite of the gyro. Damn, she was hungry! She was always hungry, it seemed. Her mother approved of her appetite. Empty crocus bag canno’ stand up, Mama was fond of saying.

“No, no,” he gave a sly smile and turned his eyes down. “On modal logic.”

Well, there you are, asshole.

The way he was cocked sideways on his chair with his elbows on the table, she half expected him to fart. Everything about him was a presentation. She was reminded of a child’s first clumsy attempts at dance steps before he’d developed that unselfconscious habituation to his own body.

“Kripke’s not the main character in my paper.” She took another greedy bite of her sandwich and had to chew with her mouth open. She exaggerated a bit, because she had the sudden puerile urge to gross him out. The old “see-food” gag.

“True enough,” he allowed, hesitating for a bit to watch her masticate on her food. “Do you have a boyfriend?”

She slowly placed her sandwich on the plate, swallowing, then dabbed her mouth again.

“I beg your pardon?”

“I just want to get to know you better. Sorry, didn’t mean to pry? Huxley said that an intellectual is someone who’s found one thing more interesting than sex.” He smiled.

“What?” She wasn’t smiling. Hit with a gush of icy antagonism, the last remnant of her anxiety fell away like a muddy brick.

Oliver, fellow orienteer, walked into the Deli. Nineteen-year-old junior from Winston-Salem. Uncombed blond hair. Cargo shorts revealing powerful legs covered in pale down. She waved, sucking at her teeth. He waved back. She held up a finger at him, one minute. Oliver nodded.

“Who’s that?” Ryan asked her.

“A friend.”

“Boyfriend?”

“Friend.”

Ryan revised his Asperger’s thesis. She was comfortably sociable with her friend.

“Would you like to get together another time?” He queried. “Perhaps we could have dinner. You seem to enjoy food. We could discuss food as one of the physical desiderata.” He flashed an oily sex-shop smile.

Desiderata! The shit was on now!

“I don’t think so,” she said, wrapping her half-eaten gyro back in the foil. “Dr. Ryan, is there anything wrong with my paper that we need to discuss?”

“Well, I can’t really say—”

“Because, I’m going to be frank with you, sir,” she cut him off. Then she worked a pinkie into the back of her gums to dislodge something. See food, dickhead. “It’s a good paper. I may publish it when this semester ends. I’ve already queried Faith and Philosophy. They’re interested.”

“I’m sure—”

“Excuse me, Doct . . . David. I’m not quite finished.”

“Well, go ahead,” he said, cornered and put out.

“My roommate’s a law student. Last night, she and I reviewed Title XII and Title IX together, as well as the Education Amendments of 1972.”

“Wha—”

“They cover sexual harassment. And while I’m not intending to file a complaint against anyone, I believe you might be soliciting a relationship that goes beyond grad school collegiality.”

“But—”

“If I’m wrong, I apologize in advance. David. But for the record, I have neither the intention nor the desire to sleep with you, now or in the future. So, from this point forward, I’ll ask that our intercourse with each other be of the academic and professional kind. That means that any further attempts to seek personal information or personal contact with me will be unwelcome, and therefore fall within the scope of the law.”

Sam’s legal verbiage sounded pretty tough. The scope of the law. Ooooooooh!

Ryan drew himself up in his chair, feet flat on the floor now, his little hands clamped onto the edge of the table like a squirrel robbing a bird feeder. His eyes had narrowed into slits, and his mouth — which she looked at now — was a straight, cold line.

“There’s no need for you to be bellicose,” he stated. “I’ll certainly maintain a professional distance if that’s your wish. We came to discuss your paper. Which I think needs work. I know you have a perfect scholastic record, and I assume you want to retain it. I was just trying to help you do that.”

“Dr. Ryan, I’m eighteen. I look even younger, so people jump to conclusions. I’m not worried about the quality of my paper. I know the grade it deserves, and I know you’ll be fair. Because if my grade is questionable, I’ll formally challenge it, which will include a paper trail. I’ll be writing a memorandum for record of this encounter today when I get home. It’ll be witnessed by my roommate, a law student. I don’t want to file an actual complaint. Not because I’m worried about my scholastic record, but because I’d worry about you.”

“Is that a threat?”

“No, Dr. Ryan . . . David. I’d never put anyone in the position of having been publicly accused of improper advances toward me. I’d be terrified that it would get back to my father.”

She suddenly realized that this did sound like a threat. She regretted it the second it was said, like a girly-girl calling on a male relative to defend her honor. Her concern, though, was exactly as stated.

“Your father?” He’d swelled up, sleeve tats hopping, gym muscles contracting, his lats spreading under the polo shirt. “What about your father?”

“I love my dad. I don’t wanna see him in prison.”

“And who is your father?”

8

Newberry, Michigan
September 15, 2021

Newberry was the County seat of Luce. Once known for hosting a state insane asylum, it now hosted a massive prison, surrounded by double fences topped with shiny coils of razor wire.

“Moose Capital of Michigan,” said a sign coming into town. There were moose statues and moose signs and moose stores and moosey little restaurants. Even here in the moose capital, moose were shy and seldom seen. Likewise, Yoopers, as they called themselves, seldom saw families like the Dales.

Before her father’s death, she remembered, people had given them—white father, dark Caribbean mother, and amalgamated Deangela—that extra glance.

“So many white people here you could go snow-blind,” Daddy would jape.

The few black residents of Newberry, mostly corrections employees Deangela presumed, seemed to move soundlessly through town like restless phantoms. Driving into town now, she prepared herself to be marked by her smoky complexion, full mouth, black eyes, short nose, tight hair, and that gap in her overbite she’d inherited from Mama. Post-Ryan, she could see it in their faces, that protean expression, lost and bursting to say whatever thing might ground them again as soon as she was out of earshot.

The memory of Ryan induced an aggrievement in her now; and that shot of venom was a momentary relief. Easier to be aggrieved than grieving. Like adolescent cutters transposing their pain from their hearts to their skin. She’d stay with the embitterment for a while.

Sometimes the “white swivel,” as she’d come to think of it, was a simple wow, I just realized that this place has hardly any black people. Sometimes it was that other thing, where she felt a target congealing on her back. This had worsened, here and more generally, ever since a New York slumlord had taken up residence in the Oval Office.

When they’d come to the Upe with Daddy—the ropey little green-eyed white man—they’d been spared “the swivel” for more than an instant There was that extra helping of polite that vibrated back off of the threat people sensed from Daddy. She’d loved him, but, as she grew older, even she could see it. He’d never puffed up on people with threat displays. On the contrary, he was scrupulously courteous. Always understated. He detested loudmouths, braggarts, and overcompensating men. “Macho dickheads,” he called them. Nonetheless, there was a nearly tangible eidolon draped around him like a great spider, warning people the courteous little white man with the weird aquamarine eyes didn’t always belong to himself, and that trifling with him might be a grave error. She’d thought of her dad as a rock when she was younger, but in the end, he’d been a suicide bomb.

“And who is your father?” Ryan had asked.

My tender advocate, she thought, who’ll drink your fucking blood. When Daddy had left the last time for Afghanistan, his mind was making little phase-leaps. Then he was dead with less than five days on the ground.

Theodora, dead. Daddy, dead. It made the pervasion of ravens seem somehow apropos, like oracles standing in a place between the visible world and the Valley of Hinmon.

The Newberry Country Club streamed past on her left as she approached the town limits. There were elk here again, so they said, and red wolves, but she’d never seen either. She’d only ever once seen a moose, and that at like a half a mile. Every autumn came the hunters, men who needed trophies. I am Man the Hunter. Baudrillard’s ghost gave a nod, yes, all these simulations. At least this one required an occasional effort. The bullets and flesh were real, then the taxidermist had his turn.

In the local eateries, one’s meal was inevitably overwatched by dozens of glassy taxidermic eyes. Every restaurant seemed to feature a large collection of dead animal heads on the walls or whole mounted animals in frozen “wild nature” postures. Some on display for so long, they looked like they’d died of mange.

Nothing says lunch to me like a BLT and a dusty-ass dead fox.

Men. Some are safe, some extremely not.

She pulled in at the Holiday gas station and convenience store for two blue plastic containers of trout worms—four dollars apiece. The checker, a young white woman of around twenty. Loose brown ponytail. Black semi-rimless glasses. Fresh new wedding set on her left ring finger. She gave Deangela “the swivel.” Looked down at the worms.

“Fishin’?” the checkout woman asked.

“Yep.”

“Where ya goin’?”

“East Branch.”

“Oh.”

She ran out of things to say. Gave Deanglea her change and told her good luck.

9

North Carolina
2010

She’d been eighteen. But that home schooling, yeah . . . and the mere three years of experience in the age-segregated hotboxes of formal education. She really, really didn’t apprehend at an intuitive level the unwritten rules of the postmodern hipster gulags of graduate students and untenured faculty. The Academy, she’d found out the hard way, was a jungle war fought with wine and bad faith instead of machetes.

She’d gone home after confronting Ryan feeling somewhat triumphant for having challenged him. The threat was empty, though, and the claim about keeping memoranda an extemporaneous lie.

A year later, she’d wish she had kept memoranda, and she never leveled an empty threat again. She’d been a child. No matter she was parsing Nietzsche and Nussbaum, she’d fallen prey to the childish temptation to bluff and move on. But her threat had frightened Ryan. Upon reflection in future years, Deangela would assimilate the costly lesson that the best way to draw an attack on oneself is to make yourself the object of another person’s fear. And humiliation—that hardest of all things to forgive. She did humiliate him—justifiably perhaps—but the end result was that Ryan felt he had to destroy Deangela Dale.

In July 2010, she’d gone fishing with her mother up near Durham where she had some kind of bizarre anxiety attack that she later recognized as a premonition. Two days later, Mama called her in Chapel Hill. Daddy was dead, killed in action in Afghanistan a year and a half from his pension.

Deangela descended into Hell.

While she was there, Ryan hit her with a plagiarism charge, the equivalent in university of being called a pedophile. Real stone the leper stuff. For the first time in her life, the shit hit the racial fan, and she was standing dead-center in front of it. Never in her previous life had anyone come at her with that kind of malignant, single-minded, calculating, and destructive intent; and nothing she’d compiled in that hyperplastic nineteen-year-old mind had prepared her for it . . . or how easy it would be for him. It was a bullshit charge she could have rebutted in her sleep if she’d been above ground, but she was in Hell after all. Diminished in every capacity.

Ryan had a pal on the local paper who did a hit piece on her to poison the well before the charge was actually investigated. The hit piece, dripping with white paternalistic innuendo, was accompanied by a snapshot the guy had taken of Deangela as he dogged her down Franklin Street one day, catching an expression that made her look evasive and sly, one palm facing the camera.

Then she experienced it. Like a bullseye experiences a bullet. The prevailing attitude became, tsk, what a shame! Brilliant, articulate girl like that. The hoary subtext of “innate black deviance” crystallized on all sides and squeezed in like a scrap bailer on everything she thought she’d known—her father’s freshly incinerated remains sitting seventy minutes away in her mother’s living room. Ryan, the first openly hostile white man she’d encountered in her paradoxically sheltered and free-range life, led her to discover what it meant to be black—ready or not. She didn’t count herself grateful now; but she knew it was important. Ryan taught her something after all. Ryan taught her that the world, for her, could be uniquely unsafe.

Rolled over by this realization and staggered by grief, she hadn’t refuted the charges against her. Instead, she began smoking marijuana with Oliver, her blond companion from Orienteering Club, who prescribed cannabis for everything, including her anguish; and she’d jumped right down into that comfortable hole, losing her virginity in the process in an awkward, fumbling encounter that they both agreed not to replay.

The day of the hearing, she’d had her first bowl of bud at 6:15 in the morning, and became so entranced by the Nickelodeon channel that she forgot to show up. She forgot to shower for days at a time. Her sweet, maternal roommate Samantha disapproved of her smoking weed from daylight to midnight, and they lost touch as Deangela withdrew into her bedroom with her medicated grief and her sour funk.

10

Hope Mills, North Carolina
2010-2011

Then the check came. Daddy had left Farah and Deangela each a $250,000 life insurance payout. He may as well have given Deanglea a revolver to point at her own head. Dead father, academic career in ruins before it started, self-medicating, and access to a mountain of cash. She became another species, like the ones who can eat themselves to death. By the end of 2010, she was living in a crappy Hope Mills rental, where she lied to one and all that she was “working on a book.”

On any given day, she was bent like a jeweler over her little desk covered in pot paraphernalia. One-sided razor blade, extended paperclip, four-inch glass pipe, and a colorful collection of plastic lighters. She’d become obsessed with ultra-detailed fussing in the cannabis. She spread it out, nipped away the stems, set them aside, then divided the remaining product into fine, medium, and coarse. Every few days, she made “hash” out of the sticky tar. She cleaned the concentrated residue out of the glass pipes with the razor blade and paperclip. Deposit little black droplets of scorched THC onto a clean sheet of paper. Scrape, scrape through the holes. Tilt the pipe and tap-tap with a plastic lighter . . . out rained more black droplets. Patiently mince the stems using the razor blade, mix them with bud residue. Between tar-stained fingers, she rolled perfect little hashballs—rabbit turds of anesthesia. When her stash ran low or her sketchy-ass dealer was dry, she smoked the hashballs, puffing her way into a reptilian fog and a case of “chronic” bronchitis.

Along with bronchial inflammation, she acquired the total package for cable television, because the real world outside that door threatened to disembowel her. She had all the channels, all the gadgets. She’d barely bitten into that quarter of a million dollars, so she subscribed, subscribed, and subscribed. She was too rooted in Mama’s syncretic Catholicism to consider suicide, but she was so fucking sad and angry all the time that it felt like she could peel her own face off. Surfing channels for hours, she was in control—her second-hand recliner and the little dope table beside it like a cockpit array. Control, when she hit that sweet spot that said, “I can hide here for an hour or two.” TV land is never unsafe.

Ninety-nine percent of what TV she’d found was unadulterated shit, working her way through every movie and series made in six languages. The French were the worst, she opined, oozing that angsty and plot-free pretension; she wanted stories, not a mirror of her own wretched psyche. Even baked by six in the morning, she was repeatedly struck by how utterly strange and irrelevant, almost hallucinatory, popular culture was. Someday, she’d start maybe tomorrow, that would be her book. She wasn’t fucked up and zoning out on television. She was doing research.

Within a year, she was hacking up wet, green mucous throughout the day. Her body became flaccid, her mind befogged. She refused to answer her phone, texting at odd hours to avoid conversation. She stocked up on groceries once a week at the Food Lion down the road, with a list, like a hit-and-run mission, returning at speed to her agoraphobic dope den.

On January 10th, 2011, Farah showed up at Deangela’s Hope Mills dump with a rental van, and insisted—in a way that only those who knew Farah could understand—that they load Deangela’s belongings and return to Farah’s apartment in Fayetteville. Farah confiscated the dope and paraphernalia, dropped it in a wrinkled plastic grocery bag, carried the package to the corner, and pitched it authoritatively into a dumpster.

Two days later, Deangela was jonesing on a flight to Belize to stay with Aunt Elke outside Dangriga.

Elke’s mission: pull Deangela out of a hole. Elke’s method: carry water.

Deangela carried well water in Dangriga, eight-ten times a day, drawing it straight from the earth with her own muscles. Water for cooking. Water for laundry. Water for cleaning, Water for drinking. Water for the chickens and ducks.

When they had time, between storms standing along the Caribbean horizon and howler monkeys bellowing like elephants from the inland forest, they fished.

11

Northern Michigan
September 15, 2021

At the Shamrock camp, she’d carry water and with it, Theodora.

Theodora, the enigma. Lumbee. Racially indecipherable. Quaker in a GI town. Wild head, long explosive hair gone entirely snow white before she was thirty-five. Like an antediluvian muse. (Deangela had worn her own hair like Theodora until she left university. Now she shared her mother’s low-maintenance boy-cut.) Theodora was plump and comfortable, the memory now recalling for Deangela something the caribe contemplative Audre Lorde had written once, wondering how the sun felt on another woman’s belly.

Five days a week she’d spent with Theodora, from the time Deanglea was four until she was fourteen when she started college. Deangela had no siblings. Farah was warned away from more children after Deangela almost killed her own mother with gestational diabetes in the last trimester. Farah and Abner (“A.D.” to most) tripled the resources committed to Deangela’s upbringing. That included a full-time tutor. Theodora, naturalist and pedagogue, the teacher with only one pupil. Friend to Deangela, to Farah, and even to A.D.

“I don’t want you to be successful,” Theodora told her once. “I want you to be good.”

Theodora’s friendship was yet another cultural quarantine, inadvertently leaving Deangela unprepared for a world divided by age, color, and envy. And so Deangela had never experienced that burning need to belong that biracial children develop in public schools, with their cruel peer hierarchies and bitchy in-groups. She’d been out from under Theodora’s wing for just four college years when two men in uniform knocked on Mama’s door and told them that Master Sergeant Abner Dale was killed in action in Afghanistan on July 14th, 2010. Then Ryan. Then the crash. Then the long, slow, steady climb out of her well of despair. Deangela was determined not to let this crash her. The Shamrock camp. Her grieving place. A place where she’d carry water and sink her feet into the earth.

12

North out of Newberry, the world turned sparse and safe again. More broad beaver marshes, and now, in late September, the birches, aspens, and maples beginning to catch fire with autumn color among the many greens of jack pine, hemlock, tamarack, fir, and spruce. All overwatched by the massive pagodas of white pine, tip-curled to ward off demons. Cedar swamps and long, Jurassic fern ridges, the ground rendered impassable by a mad latticework of moribund wood, a living forest patiently drinking up its own dead.

Occasionally, this forest consumed people, too. They’d underestimate its deceptive tranquility and the quietly absorptive threat concealed in all that lateral depth and cunning beauty. They wandered off and disappeared. Within a hundred feet of the road, you could suddenly look up and find yourself lost. Everything looked too much the same; everything looked too different; this paradox overwhelming the shrunken sensibilities of a world now starved by machines and dependency. Frightened and alone, often cold, the hapless hiker or careless hunter was just swallowed up by this vast and acquiescently beguiling organism. This is what made it safe for Deangela—wildlife photographer, birder, orienteer, and fisherwoman, armed with her father’s and Theodora’s patient fieldcraft of knots, knives, navigation, signs, birds, and botany. At the Shamrock, she’d be buffered by long miles of this deadly innocence.

Her father’s grandfather had bought the Shamrock camp in 1908, a perfect cartological square with two outstanding features: the oldest white pine in the state and an artesian spring. Named after the profusion of plants by the same name, the Shamrock nestled in a wide draw adjacent to a small marsh watered by the spring. No infrastructure. Six-foot winter snows. Near-lethal clouds of mosquitoes and black flies from May until late July. And well before arriving at the Shamrock, satellite coverage disappeared, the little hideaway evading even the imperceptible entrapment of electronic surveillance. The camp was further enclosed within the eight square miles of the Luce Sportsmen Hunting Club—a second defensive perimeter.

She turned off M-123 onto Widgeon Road, a rugged dirt track leading to Widgeon Trail. There she arrived at the Club’s gate. An easement agreement entitled Deangela and her mother to two copies of the high security key.

The surrounding club was barely populated except in the fall when dozens of men and a few of their wives came to hunt. The men drank beer in their trucks along the wet, sandy, potholed roads, while dogs treed hapless little black bears for the men to walk out and shoot. To its credit, the club protected their little family plot from renegade loggers and tourists, which was why that one white pine, born around the time that Blackbeard blockaded the Port of Charleston, had survived. Thank God, she thought as she pulled into the camp, for mosquitoes and swamps and heavy snowfall and the Luce Sportsmen’s Club.

Unregulated by clocks, un-powered by electricity, unreachable by cell phone—the price (and reward) for coexisting with the Shamrock’s strange surrounding arboreal darkness. Living to an unusual degree without a net—especially when she was on the river—and not letting the infantilizing fears of a technologically-mediated life get the upper hand and desacralize it. She opened the passenger door. Isis bounded out past her, leaping through the crispy browning ferns like a drunken dancer.

Carry water, fish, and cook. With intent and acceptance. Like she did at Aunt Elke’s packed clay dwelling, abustle with clown roosters, psychotic laying hens, and piebald ducks.

Deangela scrabbled plastic three-gallon jugs from under the cabin and descended through the woods along the dark, mossy path to the spring house—a century-old cinderblock structure patiently disappearing beneath a rug of limbs, roots, vines, moss, and variegated lichen.

The doorless entrance exhaled a clean subterranean chill like a cave. The dim interior hummed with mosquitos. She clicked on her headlamp. Set into the slab was the thirty-inch ceramic collar that formed the well. She set the four jugs down. In the beam of her headlamp the water was stunningly clear, almost clearer than clear. A clean bed of swirled yellow sand lay at the bottom around a black nipple of rock through which the spring itself rose, the water pouring off through a pie-sized outlet.

Mama had gone in without a light once. She’d stepped into the well, squealing at the cold. Daddy had run to her rescue, where he found Farah wet and laughing. The next day, when she’d gone back with a light, Daddy had a sign next to the well: “No Swimming.”

Deangela smiled at the memory as she climbed ponderously back up the steep path with the filled jugs.

The cabin was a boxy little thing. Tres utilitarian. She opened the windows to air out the must and mildew.

In 1953, a much more well-appointed log cabin, built in the late nineteenth century, had burned. A friend of her grandfather had gotten drunk and built an outsize fire. It jumped from the fireplace and onto the walls, reducing the Shamrock Lodge to cinders. When her great-grandmother and great-grandfather returned from Newberry that night, they mistook the glow from the fire for the Northern lights, a bump of elation before they arrived to discover their beloved camp alight, the fire still roaring like a demon, the remorseful perpetrator bawling like a calf outside. All that now remained of the great cabin was a chest-high hand pump that no one bothered to bring back to life with a new leather cup.

On low ground near the treeline behind the box cabin, her parents had built a circular fire pit, constructed with a combination of concrete chunks from the original cabin’s foundation and colorful egg-smooth stones collected from the shore of nearby Lake Superior.

The “new” cabin had a vertical fifty-six-inch gas cylinder standing alongside like a grimy silver phallus. The bottle ran the trailer stove, two gas lanterns, and the refrigerator. For additional light, she used three kerosene lanterns and her head lamp. The kitchen and one additional room were in the back. In the main room—eight by fourteen feet—were four folding cots. The back room was storage for tools and extra cots.

In the middle of the main room stood a McKesson folding bedside commode with a black-and-gray paisley Furnival slop jar. The folding commode was handy for more serious business in the woods, too—more comfortable than squatting while you fanned mosquitoes off your ass. They’d never bothered to put in an outhouse. There was an old Army entrenching tool for catholes. Daddy and Mama were perfectly content to go with “the latrine’s anywhere out of sight and downwind.” She’d inherited their easygoing procrastination. The forest cleaned up after.

Ribbed green steel roof. The exterior: treated lumber, stained beaver brown. Blonde untreated knotty pine for the interior. Mediocre, very mediocre, insulation. The cabin’s cold nights suited her. She slept best under an embankment of blankets, the chill air circling her face.

Her best friend Cedar, a dark-skinned city girl, had asked if it frightened her to stay at the Shamrock alone. At night. She couldn’t answer. She’d been there with Daddy and Mama, then with Mama, then with Mama and Isis, and then—occasionally—with just Isis. Like now. Never “alone.”

Once the cabin was aired and organized, she made tea.

13

Instead of mildew, now, she smelled cedar and moss and forest duff. She smelled herself a little, too, something that had never bothered her in herself or others—this thing about people wanting to smell like anything except people. Prodigy, mongrel, oddity.

According to the Audubon Society, it was the oldest white pine in Michigan—the venerable Mothertree of the Shamrock—the camp’s queen and mycorrhizal hub. Isis nosed through the leaf litter along the faint trail behind Deangela.

As one approached, the Mothertree didn’t show herself from a distance. She’d found over the course of centuries a way to blend in, to be the eldest without the sin of pride. It was only in the last few steps that her great mass came bewitchingly into view, so thick that they’d once had four adults try unsuccessfully to touch hands around her trunk.

The tree looked at Deangela the way really old people do, silent as a mirror. A stillness that nonetheless speaks, its melancholic gaze reminding one that death and life are part of the same patient drama. It says breathe, listen, wait. There’s something here or near or oblique from existence that you can’t decipher yet, but it taps on walls of your life, like a prisoner trying to communicate with an adjacent stone cell using knocks and scrapes for dots and dashes.

Beyond the tree, she bent to remove the leaves and pine straw from a small stack of Lake Superior rocks. Forty-two of them, multiply colored and sized, one for each year her father had lived. Under the stones, a small glass container with some of his ashes (the rest in a cemetery plot in Durham). She stood there, dead still. She didn’t know how long.

In three and a half months caring for Theodora, Deangela had seen the agony of gradual death. Theodora herself had said it early on: “God takes us back a piece at a time.” Looking back from before that last rattling breath, everything in Theodora’s life had aimed her at that little spot on a mechanical hospital bed, in a room full of passing people, beeping away with its vain technologies—impotent distractions in the face of the dark mystery, the lengthening shadow between presence and the final abandonment.

Here, with cedar and duff in her nostrils and the wind singing in whispers through the tops of the great conifers, she was suddenly rolled over by the horror of sterilizing our deaths. She could put Theodora at peace here. Or such was her intent. Give her up to this strange portion of the primeval, this place where the living and dead might tap and scrape through one another’s walls, if she could just be still.

14

Isis snuffled through the forest along the river.

The water’s breath was keen, its voice like the laughter of faraway children. Deangela surveyed the red stream from a little tongue of sandy stone and alder. It hadn’t rained in four days, and so the East Branch was restful. She eased herself into the tannin-stained water near the old Shamrock Bridge, naught now but a few rail timbers aging on each bank. The water, pressing the waders onto her legs like a cold compress, smelled like evergreen wind and decayed alderwood.

First cast, she pitched the spinner and worm ten feet to her front, straight across to the steep bank opposite and into a four-foot hole below an enormous stone. She got the strike in less than two seconds, gave the fish a beat, line tracking across the current. She set the hook. It held, her rod alive now in her hand. The line turned and headed downstream as Deangela reeled.

A fat strong female, nine inches long, churning the water. Deangela stretched the net’s elastic lanyard from the clip on the back of her vest, and dipped up the trout. The brookie whipped and thrashed, but gravity and Deangela Dale had her now. Keeper. Deangela tucked the rod under her arm, wet her hand, and gripped the fish. Cold, smooth, muscular, throbbing. She worked the hook free and dropped the trout into her creel. It kicked in protest then relaxed.

Deangela kept one vigilant eye always on the woods.

There were unknowable white men out here.

Not many. Sometimes you’d not see any for days.

Occasionally, though, there they were.

Like that six-foot-plus white man with the improbably long, red beard three years back. A tense encounter, she’d been on the other side of the river when he’d begun to interrogate her with a strong lacing of profanity to jack up the intimidation. She’d answered his queries neutrally, all the while checking for big trees to put between her and him, because he almost certainly carried a firearm. He let it go after he’d had his fun, and she’d continued downstream. Fast. She felt a little frisson now on her scalp, her groin clenching at the memory. She loved this river. It was a holy place. But there was some broken shit going on even here.

Isis barked in the distance. Deangela’s anxious reverie dissolved. Isis had her back, and her orienteering experience gave her that tactical edge. One thing she’d noticed about big white guys in this particular wilderness, guys who spend seven months a year practicing alcoholism, eight-ball, and gluttony in the snowbound local dives. These dudes, they weren’t runners. In her vest, a USGS 1/24,000, hand-gridded topographical map, laminated with pencil acetate. Protractor, Silva compass, and mechanical pencil. All in a waterproof bag. Dots and dashes she knew how to read.

At camp, she kept what she’d dubbed her “flyaway pack.” If ever she needed a fast getaway from camp, she had a rucksack with the a first aid kit, a pump pellet pistol for small game, a Ziplock bag of dogfood, a dozen protein bars, a water filter, a one-quart cooking pot, a two-quart canteen, two space blankets, two rain ponchos with two military surplus liners, thirty feet of para-cord, a bottle each of Benadryl, aspirin and acetaminophen, two plastic cigarette lighters, a partial roll of duct tape, a Mini-Maglite, a spare headlamp, and a mini-hatchet. All enclosed in a waterproof bag. Total weight, with water, thirty-one pounds. On her hip, everywhere except church, she wore a Leatherman. In the city, she might be the mongrel oddity. Out here . . . she knew her shit.

She missed a second trout at the first hole, then waded noisily downstream over a long shallow shelf of banded ironstone. Up ahead, the river made a long dogleg. A huge tamarack leaned out from the right-hand bank, its partially submerged roots forming a foamy whirlpool on the downstream side of a little natural fall. She knew that spot, too, approaching it cautiously and keeping her shadow off. She opened the bale and let the spinner’s weight draw the line off the spool as it ran through her hand until she had about five feet hanging off the rod’s last eye. Closed the bale, stretched for the whirlpool, and lowered the spinner.

This one hit like a locomotive and almost broke her grip.

“Hoo-kay!” she barked, startling a nearby jay.

Rod high, line taut, she netted what looked like a ten-incher. In the creel. Two in less than twenty minutes. She squatted to dip the creel and freshen the water. Both fish kicked inside. A kingfisher flew past so fast and close she could almost feel the wind off his wings. Belly white, without a female band.

The forest rose up like church spires on both sides of the river, deep green with Fall splashes of orange and gold and molten red. Above, a thin cloud drifted, sunlit along its shape-shifting boundary. Ahead, light danced along fifty yards of stream ripple, at the end of which was a pocket of deep water. She splashed across shallow sand along the outside bend.

Two channels came into view flowing around a tall stone. She flipped the spinner under the cut banks before going after the deep water. On the fourth cast, she got a bump, but no pull. Juveniles. Another bump, then another, until she had to replace her worm.

How did Daddy do this? Slip into this pristine grace? Wade this water? Stand looking into the dark undergrowth behind the spring house where spirits dwell, then go back to the Army, with its endless bureaucratic hassles and its murderous purpose . . . again and again?

Before he’d left that last time, mad as a March hare, his words and thoughts were breaking contact, like a file of refugees separated in the dark.

Deangela pretended she was past it, and this annoyed her mother. Deangela pushed this question of why away between them, childishly (yes, she admitted it) wanting nothing more than to find some niche where she could ride out life’s pleasures and disappointments, the desire for cannabinoid contentment never far below the surface. She wanted a rail upon which she could put her life and ride. The questions persisted nonetheless, and now Theodora’s death had peeled it all back like a dirty bandage.

When Daddy returned from Monterrey, he’d started with the random daylight “blackouts.” Ricochet from a conversation about divinity to toothpaste commercials, like an escaped water hose. One night at her apartment in Chapel Hill, just before the fatal deployment, he’d given her this long, heart-lacerating confession about why he and Mama didn’t live in the same house any more. He’d attacked Farah one night coming out of a drug-induced nightmare.

He’d lost his compass. He’d wandered off to a place where everything looked too much the same and everything looked too different.

Daddy, Mama, Theodora, and Deangela. Where she’d belonged.

She and Farah. The last survivors.

She waded through the ripple. Rod held high in one hand, she clutched alder branches for balance with the other. Nothing puts a damper on a river day like ice water filling your waders. She’d done it before. It was disagreeable.

The current flattened. Beginning of a drop. She stopped. Set her feet and cast the spinner well downstream. Under the branches along the opposite bank. The spinner curved across the stream in the course of her retrieve. The strike came in the middle and dove with surprising force, taking out drag. This was no brookie.

Tip up, she let the fish continue to whistle off drag, reeling when the fish turned her way. Three pounds, easy. Strong, and furious. She loosened the drag again, the fish still stripping off line. She reined left. Steelhead, she guessed. It turned toward her and she reeled again. It turned away, she let it wear itself out, her heart slamming like a hammer. Then the line relaxed. She knew it had snapped.

“Shit! Damn! Fuck!”

She worked her way over to the eastern bank, cursing again when she almost stepped off into a hole. She mounted a three-foot bank on her knees, turned and sat. Settled in. Breathed off her frustration. Tried not to think about smoking a joint.

Once calm, she bit off the curled end of the broken line—something Mama warned would ruin her teeth. Dug in her vest pocket for the spinner box. She chose a yellow-body with red spots and a black bucktail. Tied on with a Palomar knot. Set the rod and reel aside on the narrow trail. She took the p-Style out of her vest, a simple little plastic device she considered pure genius, which allowed her to urinate by simply unzipping like a man; a gadget that served well here, on Mama’s boat, and—paired with a jug—for on-the-job surveillance.

Across from Red Beard’s private property now. Watchful, she followed the eastern bank downstream, two hundred yards along a faint trail, threading the rod ahead of her between the tangled branches, one hand up to protect her eyes. Red Beard’s side had an eyesore of a metal sink above the steep bank where he cleaned his fish. Right next to his forest-polluting “No Trespassing” sign.

Once past, she encountered another hole, treacherous to wade. High, sandy bluff along the opposite bank. Potted with sudden drop-offs. She eased back into the water. The first step sank her through unstable sand to within inches of her wader tops. She felt her way back up onto a small soft sandbar. Belly-deep, cold water pressing in heavily, rod held high out of the water. The creel floated on its side, the two fish inside now as still as steaks.

On the third cast she set the hook. It was a mere six inches. She let it go and threw to the same spot again. On the third cast, she hooked another big one. Fearful now of breaking another line, she spent almost five minutes to net a fifteen-inch brown trout. And it was finished.

15

September 16, 2021

Isis huffed at something, waking Deangela. She consulted her cheap, chunky Explorer with the luminous sweep hand: 1:19 a.m.

She’d fried the fish with more salt than they’d needed. Her face and fingers felt fat and swollen. Bladder about to pop. Isis murmured again then dropped her head back onto Deangela’s leg. Deangela sat up. Felt in the dark for the slop jar, then changed her mind. It was clear outside. She could hear it in the thin breeze and see the Milky Way out the window and above the treetops.

She stepped outside, Isis running past her legs. The moon squeezed through the treetops on a star-creamed sky, flickering with squadrons of brown bats. Away from all artificial light, great highways of stars, crossing one another, bending through each other, exploding in clusters.

Was it Dostoevsky who said it? “The darker the night, the brighter the stars, the deeper the grief, the closer is God.”

“Where are you?” she whispered.

The night spoke to her here with an intimacy that was nearly unbearable. As did the mosquitoes. (Grace penetrates nature; nature penetrates back.)

She voided, dabbed with a fold of toilet paper, and dropped it.

Looking up one last time, she was seized by a raw certainty. This moment, it’s here then gone, like a moth hitting a windshield.

Three days she stayed, then packed. She’d changed adult diapers. Painted bed sores. Watched her teacher and friend disappear in dreadful stages for three months before this communion with the dead. She’d sat this shiva long enough.

Time to return to the world and its distractions.

PART TWO

War is an evil in as much as it produces more wicked men than it takes away.

—Immanuel Kant

16

Raleigh, NC
September 27, 2021

She’d never done that before. Investigated arson.

The prospective client said she’d see Deangela after eight that evening. Ginni Langhorst. Worked until seven as an office manager at Remson School. Private. Expensive. Middle and high school. Ruling-class youth-training-center for Raleigh’s finance, tech, and medical nouveau riche.

8:15 p.m. Ginni texted.

She lived in a one-story brick ranch on Newcomb Drive. Partially hidden in the bougee-bohemian Five Points area. Close to the State Capital. The same house in other areas of Raleigh might have a price tag of $250,000. But proximity to the Capital, downtown, NC State, and just general bougee-bohemianism would have jacked the price up to at least triple that.

Approaching the front door, Deangela could already smell gasoline, burnt wood, and molten plastic. Prospective Client said that her neighbors burned down her shed. Not Deangela’s usual contract, but Prospective Client was apparently willing to lay out the fees.

Ginni answered the mahogany and stained-glass door. White woman. Deangela’s height—five-four. Gym fit in the way of middle-aged women battling the inevitable. Fifteen years on Deangela, at least. Forty-five, maybe even fifty. No wedding ring and no shoes, bare pedicured feet bright against a burnished red oak floor.

“Hi, come in.”

Deangela got the second “look” from her . . . racial? age? Ginni’s slightly-edgy hipster-look included a haircut tight on the sides. Long bottle-brown backwave down the middle and worn flopped to one side. Streak of blue dye. Blue-framed glasses on a neck tether. Campy fake-leather vest with Buffalo Bill fringe over a tie-died T. She’d been pretty in her youth, at least after a reasonably well-executed nose job. Tattoo on her left arm of Anubis—Egyptian funeral god with a jackal’s head. Okay . . . that’s kinda dark. Tattoo wasn’t old. Or cheap.

“Find me okay?” Ginni asked.

“Yeah, I did.”

Deangela pushed off her flats and set them on the shoe rack in the vestibule next to Ginni’s Doc Martens. Ginni was someone who cared about her floors.

“Thank you,” Ginna said almost too effusively. Whiff of relief and obsession. Lot of work, single late-forty-something, pulling off all these performances at once. Deangela softened. Not because Ginni was a victim of arson. Because Ginni was afraid. All the time. Tides of chronic fear. It was there in her face, under the trendy protective coloration, covered yet visible, like nipples through silk.

“Not a problem. My aunt has really nice floors. Japanese house rules,” she lied. “Your home’s beautiful, by the way.”

Deangela offered her hand. Ginni took it.

“Thank you. Would you like some coffee, tea, wine . . .?

“I smell gasoline.”

“Yes . . . I know. It’s from the fire. Can’t get it out.”

“Very sorry.”

“Thanks. Coffee?”

“Just tea, thanks, or I’ll be running laps at three in the morning.”

Ginni smiled and led her into a living room-kitchen combo separated by two square columns and an arch. Oak furniture matched the floor, with the exception of the three white stools at the kitchen bar. Ceiling blonde . . . maple? The striped, raspberry-pastel, woven rug over most of the living room floor matched an expansive sofa-love seat combo. Ginni waved one hand like she was splashing Deangela with water, indicating the sofa, then rushed into the kitchen to put on the pot.

Nerves.

Deangela slid her shoulder satchel off and sat. The sofa was amazingly comfortable. She surveyed the place while she set out her paperwork, recorder, and notebook.

Ginni had money. The garage was closed, so Deangela hadn’t seen her car, but she’d have bet it was a Prius or SAAB 93, probably teal. Nice stuff everywhere. High end. Understated the way people do when they’re secure about money. The rustic oak coffee table had set her back two thousand, minimum (three and a half months of Deangela’s health insurance). Set of four different fern prints on the wall, each identically matted and framed. The fireplace was coursed-rubble sandstone with a mantle made, naturally, of more red oak.

Arranged on the mantle were twenty or so framed photographs. One repeater in the photo array was a late adolescent boy. Son? Blue-eyed like her, light complexion, short blonde hair, little jug ears, cupid’s bow mouth, permanent look of wide-eyed surprise. The other repeater was a thirty . . . five-ish? man, no wedding ring. Midlife lover? Light brown hair. Hazel eyes. Receding hairline with a dark moustache. Always smiling beside her, always enclosing her with an arm: one on a beach, one at a party, one backgrounded by vaguely Frenchy countryside. Next to the rightmost of her and her presumed beau was a jar, labeled “Cuss Jar.” Wad of dollar bills jammed into it.

Ginni carried two cups of tea in on a bamboo tray. Matching blue scallop-shell milk churn and sugar bowl. Two fired clay coasters with pressed-in leaf patterns. Deangela thanked her. Took a cup—straight, no milk or sugar. Picked up a coaster. Ginni sat on the love seat and poured a thread of milk into her tea, spilling a few drops. Ginni’s hands trembled, ever so slightly. Not tremors, just a low-level current. Deangela reminded herself that someone just burned down her shed.

The tea was good (of course). Floral Oolong (with a gasoline finish).

“Shall we get to it, then?” Deangela asked.

“Sure. Where do we start?”

“This is my contract. I explained it on the phone, but you’ll want to look it over. This is my card in case you need to get in touch.” Deangela pulled her phone and digitsl recorder out of the satchel. Opened her last call, and showed it to Ginni. “Is this the number I use for you all the time?”

“Yes, please.”

“May I record you? I’ll erase it once it’s transcribed.”

“Certainly.”

“You work at Remson School?”

“Yeah, for a while longer. I’ve just re-enrolled at State to go for my doctorate. Sociology, believe it or not.”

“Do you like it? At Remson?

“It’s dry and indoors.”

“Ringing job endorsement.”

“Some of the indulged little brats are okay,” she said, forcing a chuckle. “My boss, on the other hand.”

“Say no more,” Deangela replied. “So, describe what happened with the fire.”

“Yesterday morning, I looked outside, and my shed was a smoldering heap of coals.” Her voice was a little unsteady. “The back fence had begun to burn, too, but by the time I got up it was out.”

“What time?”

“Dawn, maybe. Around six-thirty?”

“Lucky it didn’t burn the house. You filed a police report?”

“Yeah, but they weren’t very encouraging. One of them threatened me with arrest if I didn’t calm down. Assholes. Sorry.”

“They are assholes,” Deangela said. Ginni smiled, but she was struggling to restrain tears. “Raleigh cops have a rep . . . not a good one.”

“You’re so young,” she said abruptly. “Sorry.”

“I know. I’m twenty-nine. Thirty in a couple days. But I’ve been doing this for over eight years. I understudied with Milo Harp. You can check him out in Durham. I have a license.”

“No, no, it’s alright! You were given a glowing reference by a friend of mine. Sophie Garcia.” Divorce case in August last year. “She hired you because you speak Spanish, but she said you’re fast, accurate, and thorough. I’m just surprised . . . well, you could be twenty.”

“All good. Can you show me the shed?” Deangela picked up the recorder and pocketed her phone. Ginni led her through the kitchen and out onto a small sun porch. Deangela stopped and took several shots with her phone camera.

In the ash and cinders there were remnants of a small lawn mower, a Schwinn women’s bicycle, garden hoses, and tools. There was a little raised veggie bed along the northern fence, bedraggled now with mildewed cucumber vines, exhausted tomatoes, crabgrass, and a spreading mat of ground ivy.

They stepped out onto the back lawn. It stank of burnt plastic. Deangela stopped midlawn (if this little thousand square feet or so could have been called that). She shot a 360 mosaic.

They went back inside as they talked.

“Did the police say they’d send an investigator? Or the Fire Department?”

“Mm-hmm, but they weren’t sure when.”

“Call anyone else?”

“Stanley, my boyfriend.” The guy in the pictures. “He’s out of town.” She saw Deangela take a note. “Stanley Tomasik. He has a website. He builds gyms. Gymnasiums, not jewels . . . in people’s houses. It’s a niche market.”

“Is he coming back?”

“He’ll be done tomorrow. He’s in Charlotte.” The prick didn’t drive three hours to check on her after an arson attack? Shit boyfriend. Yet another validation, thought Deangela, of her own relentless singlehood. Stanley’s pictures suggested he was at least ten years her junior.

“And you think it’s who that did it?”

“Around the corner, the cult.”

‘Cult?”

“There’s this guy, Rod something-or-other, he’s got a little pack. Dart. Rod Dart, that’s his name.” Really? Rod Dart? “Guys that come over and sit in his backyard sweat lodge and bang on drums.” Deangela’s scalp crawled. All-male groups of any kind put her in mind of crotch-clutching, cat-calling frat boys. For women, men’s laughter is a sound pregnant with peril. She couldn’t imagine what drums were like.

“Why them?” Deangela asked. They’re weird, okay. Doesn’t mean they commit arson. Motive?

“I called the police on them once,” Ginni said. “They were running around completely nude in the front yard at eleven at night with hard-ons, painting each other with feathers.”

Acid, mescaline, X? Bad enough they had some male grievance group, but they’d cranked the volume with psychoactive chemicals.

“When was this?”

“Three weeks ago, yesterday.”

“Y’all have words about it?”

“Stanley did. My boyfriend. Kinda went alpha-male on Rod two days later when he saw him out front. Stanley can have a short fuse, zero to ninety in five seconds. I thought he was gonna hit the guy, but the guy backed off.”

Humiliation. Number one motive for revenge. Ryan lesson.

“No contact since?”

“None.”

“What’s that?” Deangela asked, looking at the jar on the end of the mantle again.

“That’s Stanley.”

“No, the jar. You have kids?”

“Oh no, I mean, yeah, but my son’s in college.” She laughed. “Stanley set that up. I put in a dollar when I swear . . . hard habit for me.”

I’d give Stanley his jar and tell him to shit in it. Different boundaries, I guess.

“I’m gonna go back out and take a few shots of the shed. Won’t take long. You done anything to it?”

“Hardly stand to look at it.”

“S’okay. Just a sec?”

Ginni nodded and sat back down to her cold tea.

It had been a nice shed, real wood—not stamped metal, plastic, or pressboard. Strong, well-leveled slab. Nails not staples. Lag bolt sticking up from the char. More scorched garden implements. Bits of burnt black shingle. The wall remnant along one side was burnt diagonally. Deangela followed the burn angles back. There it was. Puddle of thick burnt plastic. Gas can? Point of ignition? She took a series of shots. Ran her fingers through the grass and smelled. Gas leading to the house, too. She did another finger test along the back patio. More gas. That accounted for the lingering smell. She checked her phone for last night’s weather. Winds from the southeast at twelve miles an hour may have saved Ginni’s life.

The fence had an interior hasp on the gate. Padlocked.

She stuck her head back inside.

“Is that back gate always locked when you go to bed?”

“I lock everything. I have a sleeping disorder . . . insomnia. I take Restoril and wear earplugs. Anyone breaks in, I’m pretty helpless.” Skittish laugh. “They must’ve climbed over.”

“Be right back.”

It hadn’t rained in two days. Deangela pulled out her keys with a little penlight on the chain and scanned the upper edge of the privacy fence. The perpetrators must have pole vaulted, because they didn’t leave a mark on the film of algae along the upper edge.

17

By 8:45 she’d left Ginni’s. She circled the cul-de-sac past 740 Newcomb—Ginni’s drummer-boy neighbor—and parked with a good line of sight. The lights were still on inside.

She opened her laptop.

Rod Dart had left an eight-inch crack in the living room drapes. Nothing over the kitchen window but an embroidered valance. The bungalow was around twelve-hundred feet, assessed at $503,000 . . . wow. Simple driveway. Carport separating the main house from a storage room. Concrete steps to an admiral-blue front door. Stone-blue brick, with T&G white panels framing door and front windows. Privacy fence . . . all that naked sweating and drumming, after all. Black Ford Raptor with ion alloy matte-black rims in the carport—vanity plates: MADMAX4. Three other mad-maxes got there before him. She found his given name with her apps—Furman Jenkins, from Garner. He’d changed his name six years ago.

To Rod.

Dart.

Furman had issues.

He was a “health services manager,” whatever the hell that was, with Jembral LLC (nursing homes), and he made $181,000 a year. (She paid over $200 a month for these apps, and they more than reciprocated their value.)

She packed up and left.

*

September 28, 2021

She’d never forgive Jung for giving Jordan Peterson a script, or for providing conceptual cover to “mythopoetic” dude-bros like Rod Dart.

Fucking kangaroos are loose in the upper paddock.

Drum circles, culturally-appropriated sweat lodges, and whining about women. Add MDMA and mix well.

Deangela researched from her Quail Grove home-office in northwest Raleigh. She’d bought the Quail Grove house for its easy proximity to the region’s main arteries.

The Raleigh-Durham-Chapel Hill Triangle, under the direction of one developer-friendly politician after another had fast-tracked a malignant metastasis of highway construction in an apparent attempt to turn the Triangle into the same traffic-snarled horror story as Atlanta. So bad at one point that the capital newspaper called those orange-and-white caution barrels the state flower.

Quail Grove itself was a pastel, anal-retentive barracks for tech denizens laboring in Research Triangle Park; but it was a mile from a decent grocery store and a mile from the I-540 beltline. Also, a mile from Federal Highway 70, which cut straight through the RTP and poured traffic straight onto Highway 147 through Durham—the back way into Chapel Hill via 15-501 when I-40 turned into an eight-lane parking lot. Location-wise, Quail Grove was Rome.

It was only after she’d signed the papers on the house—smallest in the neighborhood for $150,000 at less than 1700 square feet—that she’d became acquainted with a legalistic polliwog named Hugh Moore, President of the Homeowners Association. She’d put up a clothesline in the back yard, and Moore tried to levy a $75 dollar fine against her for violation of “community standards.” Enter her lawyer, Samantha Clarke. Sam had found a state policy that precluded the disallowance of any “devices” that lowered carbon emissions. Like a clothesline. Cost Deangela four times the proposed fine, but worth every penny to watch Baby Huey Moore, the gone-to-seed ex-football player, turn purple when Sam cleaned his clock in small claims court. He’d trembled. Face gone so dark they almost called 911.

Quail Grove, where there are neither quail nor groves. We name things after what we’ve killed, she mused. Mammoth Springs. Apache helicopters.

“Stepford,” is what Deangela called her lukewarm Laodicea. But it was home.

Her office was an eight-by-eight cubicle with a French door, where she’d installed a metal double-pedestal file desk she’d found at the Restore and mounted a 4x8 sheet of white panelboard on the wall as a dry erase board.

That’s where Rod Dart’s picture was now. She drew lines from his picture after hours of scrolling through research apps for Rod’s disaffected companions.

Richard Flowers, Peter Branson, Johnson Cox, and William Roach. Her “most likelies” for the Night of the Feathered Boners.

Flowers was a “user experience” software designer in Cary. Outfit called Brownstone. Up and comer in tech. Apropos, because the entire town of Cary was beige, literally and figuratively.

Branson worked with Dart at Jembral, another “health services manager” lucratively warehousing surplus old folks.

Cox was an IBM boy at the Park, “content management systems.” Why are all the jobs now named as bloodless abstractions?

Roach was a Police Computer Specialist, City of Raleigh.

These mythopoetic bone-dancers aspiring to some preindustrial wild-man were all keyboard sloggers. With seriously compensatory vehicles. She’d seen Rod’s macho-mobile, and records searches showed Flowers driving a refurbished 1969 Camaro, Branson with a Rover, and Roach tooling around in his RAM Macho Power Wagon. No shit? That’s the trade name?

She leaned back in her chair, gazing up at her diagram, brows knitted, and shook her head. These guys were batshit. No doubt. But she just didn’t see them vaulting cleanly over a fence on a Sunday night to set fire to a neighbor’s shed 400 feet from the head guy’s own house, then leaping back over the fence without leaving a mark.

She turned her attention to one Stanley Tomasik, home-gym builder and controlling-ass boytoy. TransUnion, IRB, and Tracers searches. Tomasik: thirty. He drank. He had a three-year-old DUI combined with resisting arrest. He also had a domestic from five and a half years back . . . with his wife! No divorce showing in any search.

Oh my.

She didn’t even need to search his social media.

*

September 29, 2021.

Wednesday, and the air was saturated with tepid gray rain. Ginni answered on the third ring.

“We need to talk,” Deangela told her. “Not on the phone.”

“I’m home.”

“Is Stanley there?”

“No. Why?”

“Where is he?”

“Another job, in Burlington.”

“Give me half an hour.”

There was no discernable motive apart from attempted murder, at least one that fit with Deangela’s mental architecture. She was good at this most days, but it didn’t feel like “I got mine,” with a little fist pump. This job sometimes, it made her a retransmission station for suffering.

The rain had intensified. It battered Deangela’s umbrella as she walked to Ginni’s door.

Ginni received two copies of the report and photographs, one for the police. Stanley was still married to Andrea (Rutherford) Tomasik in Wake Forest. And living with her, according to his legal residence. Ginni’s face crumbled.

No marks on the locked fence. Someone with a key. Who knew she slept in a pharmaceutical coma. The lying about his marital status. The so-called trips he took for work. Deangela didn’t mention what had tipped her off first: the cuss jar. Thirty-year-old man telling his forty-seven-year-old girlfriend how to talk.

Ginni wrote the check. She was an empty thing in an empty place with an empty future, walled in with her red oak floors and the raspberry sofa and her shattered heart, rain coursing through her downspouts and onto the ground.

Deanglea looked at her own hands in her lap. She knew this barren mile.

“You know,” said Ginni, eyes brimming, “I went to jail. Twice. Once to protest the war in 2003. Another time with Reverend Barber doing the Moral Mondays. I’ve done alright in life, you know, and a lot of it was being born into the comfort of a certain amount of wealth, but I tried to at least pay my rent for living on earth by standing, as well as I’ve known how, against injustices done to others who didn’t win the birth lottery. I faced off against those thugs from the Border Patrol in 2017. I researched the politics and sociology of it all. I wrote letters, and I went to meetings. God knows how many. Even thought of myself of a kind of feminist, you know? So, how in the hell did I let this fucking serpent,” Deangela looked up at that, “into my bed? I mean, I think I’m pretty smart. But the theories all break down with . . . whatever . . . relationships?”

“Can’t help you there,” Deangela replied. “Still trying to work it out myself.”

18

Raleigh-Durham, NC
September 30, 2021

Her investigative career began with three years as an assistant-slash-understudy to Milo Harp before going to work for him under her own license. Milo, a relic born the year before Pearl Harbor, had begun as an investigator for her grandfather, a once legendary Durham civil rights attorney.

When Deangela returned from her Belizean detox, Milo offered her a job as a research assistant. Later, he taught her how to conduct surveillance and counter-surveillance so she could conduct stakeouts, surveillance, and inquiries where a septuagenarian white man would be neither inconspicuous nor welcome. In majority black Durham, he said, “My old white ass sticks out like a pink suit.”

She didn’t enjoy investigation. She enjoyed wildlife photography, with which she did make bit of money. She’d even begun to establish a reputation. Photography allowed her to do the things she loved. Roaming the woods and fields, stalking, setting up hides, and generally just being a feral kid again. Contract investigations, though? That paid the big bills. House payment, $820 a month, health insurance, $617 a month, just for starters.

She’d run an op for Milo the night before (another $350). Her mood and her sleep had suffered. Morning news of the Kavanaugh hearings only revivified her Ryan experience, doing nothing to improve her disposition. Assembling coffee in a pre-prandial funk, she recalled her worst case.

Local economics professor. He’d become obsessed with the question of whether or not his much younger wife had ever appeared in pornography. The research consisted of scouring thousands of pornographic pictures and videos with several of his wife’s photographs in hand for facial recognition and an itemized list of her anatomical idiosyncrasies—scorpion tattoo, birthmark on her left scapula, scar over her right kneecap, the relative lengths of her toes, and so on. She’d watched porn and reviewed pornographic photographs for almost six days, finding nothing, cashing out with over four grand and fearing for the future of humanity. Deangela Dale suspected that sex was nature’s bait to trap you into drama, chaos, and loss. By the time she’d clicked through internet porn for a mere hour, she was confirmed in her belief that abstinence is a hard-won blessing.

Ginni Langhorst. I rest my case.

Mama, of course, disagreed.

Her mother, Farah, wanted to meet her at Guasaca, a Venezuelan restaurant near Farah’s house in Durham. Deangela grabbed another coffee at a Starbucks on Glenwood, a large cup of light roast with enough caffeine to fry a fuse box. It was early Thursday afternoon and sunny. Along the approach to Duke country, traffic was clogged with cars and collegiate pedestrians.

Guasaca was functional-chic, all shiny surfaces, brightly painted ductwork, and punitive little wooden chairs. It specialized in arepas, a corn-cake sandwich. Choose your filling. Farah’s aging white four-door S-10 was already in the front lot. Deangela smelled grilled meat and onions as she opened her door. The sun disappeared for an instant behind a rogue cloud, the glassy reflections going dim, and something turned in Deangela. A memory of Theodora. She breathed it off and went in.

Farah was in the back corner past a queue of Dukies, wearing her dingy white straw boater (such a Garifuna touch). White capri shorts. Sky-blue cotton shirt with a sweetheart collar. The same pearl studs she always wore. Touch of makeup. Already wrapped around an arepa. Braised tilapia with avocado and lemon. She saw Deangela and parked her sandwich. Dabbed her mouth with a napkin in one hand while she wagged the other at her daughter.

Deangela signaled back that she was getting in line.

She ordered the mechada and carried it over along with a cold sweaty bottle of A&W root beer.

“Hey, Pick,” Farah offered, dabbing again with the napkin.

“Qué onda, Mama?”

“Nice shirt,” said Farah. Hawaiian print. Pink flamingos and olive-colored palms on a steel grey background.

“Thanks.” Deangela’s casual attire consisted largely, though not entirely, now of Hawaiian shirts and blue jeans in hot weather. Hoodies and work coats for the cold. Her clothiers were Tractor Supply and thrift shops.

“A man call me.” The lines of Farah’s West Indian accent had thinned over twenty-eight years in the States, but its geometry persisted. “He need ya number.”

“Job?”

“Wouldn’t say, just he need to talk. Got his number here.” She rummaged in her purse. “The code’s East Tennessee. Told ’im I’d have ya call.”

She handed Deangela a scrap with the number. 423-332-6840. Felix Sharpe. Deangela pocketed the slip.

“I’ll give him a call later,” she said. She took a crocodile bite of her arepa. “How’s Freddy?” she asked around a mouthful.

Farah’s boyfriend. Fellow nurse who worked at the Durham VA. Freddy was number four over the last six years, Farah having mourned A.D.’s death with abstinence for almost two. Since then, every boyfriend had been four things: tall, black, plump, and passive. “Jus’ ’cause I had a white Lamborghini once, don’t mean I can’t drive a big, black Cadillac now.” Like she was looking for the anti-A.D. Freddy was a pleasant man, sensitive, fastidious, unremarkable in most other ways. He’d be wounded when Farah moved on. As she would. Then Deangela would (again) be the irritable sounding board for Farah’s guilty rationalizations.

“Oh!” shot Farah. “He wants to move in.” Her face said unconditionally no.

“When did this come about?”

“Some reaction to [air quotes] our grief, I imagine. He wants to [air quotes again] reassure me or some such thing.”

“And you want me to have a relationship?” Deangela, using her own air quotes, said it before thinking. Farah flared.

“You judgin’ me?”

“No, Mama.”

“I want grandchildren, okay? Sorry.”

“Not foreclosed. I’m only 29.”

“And I’m fifty-three.” Pause. “You just haven’t met the right one yet.” Couldn’t resist.

“I’m not an incubator!” Deangela lowered her voice and leaned in because other diners had alerted to the conversation. “Hear me, Mama. I’m not broken. I just don’t need that. Lotta parents would find this a source of comfort.”

“Okay, we drop the subject.”

They ate in silence. Daddy and Theodora hovered over their tension like sad specters.

Farah’s red brick bungalow on Higbee Street was guarded by a red maple and a black oak, both showing the first blush of Fall color. Four ratty-looking boxwoods. Covered front porch under crooked and slightly overflowing gutters. Bit of water damage in the soffits. Lawn that missed a couple of appointments with the mower.

Deangela followed Farah from Guasaca to pick up Isis, dropped off during last night’s bit for Milo; something to do with a wayward boyfriend, though Deangela had seen nothing, absolutely nothing, and shut down at 3 a.m.

Farah pulled the S-10 into the two-car garage alongside her boat, a 14-foot jonny on a light trailer. Deangela parked along the curb. Isis cried inside the front door at the sound of their footsteps on the wooden porch. Farah stepped past the dog, keys still jangling from her hand, while Deangela and Isis had a wet reunion in the doorway. Isis ran and squatted on the front lawn before they went back inside.

Farah rattled things to make tea in the kitchen.

“Chamomile?” she called out.

Peace offering.

“Sure. Please,” Deangela replied from the living room. More of a drawing room, really. Framed pictures covered the walls from the chair rail, up. A crucifix, a small one, but prominent. Not one of those bare Protestant things, but one with the tortured body of the Son of Man on grim display. Birds, of course. Mama loved her birds—bird photos and prints everywhere. Mama and Daddy’s wedding picture in Dangriga. Daddy, always the snappy dresser, in his white trousers and shirt, blue blazer, red bow tie, and orchid boutonniere. Mama sporting a strapless white gown with a modest neckline and a purple flower crown. Fishing pictures: Daddy and Mama with two limits of trout at the Shamrock. Farah and Deangela with a thick string of crappie from Jordan Lake. All three of them at the coast with a catch of more than twenty blue crabs, each holding their long-handled nets triumphally alongside them like centurions with their spears. Photo of Daddy, Mama, Deangela, Grandma Shiraine, Aunt Elke, and her grown son, Derek—2002, Belize. Deangela ten years old and skinny with her explosive afro. Farah at a park, pregnant in 1992, face puffed up like a pre-eclamptic toad. Still smiling easily at Daddy, the photographer. Eleven-year-old Deangela at Raven Rock Park wading in Stewart Creek with Theodora. Farah’s nursing re-certification diploma from 1995. Deangela, Farah, and Milo at Eno River Park on a picnic. Farah, Kendra, and Vanessa, the three nurses who co-ran a clinic in Dangriga, the “Blue Clinic,” as attested by the surfeit of cobalt blue paint on the building in the background. Daddy’s mounted old scuffed boots from the Delta Force selection course, circa 1998. A plump orange sofa covered in a quilted Belizean flag, “Sub Umbra Floreo.” On the adjacent maple end table, a wrought iron lamp Daddy brought back from Peru. There on the clawfoot lampstand, a marble and malachite chess set from Afghanistan. Mama’s old anatomy coloring book from nursing school—the one she used to help Daddy study when he was doing the medic’s course. Daddy’s green berets on side-by-side hangars, dust gathered on the felt, one with a red flash and the other green and yellow, silver crossed-arrows still affixed. Antique cherrywood writing table serving as a TV stand, with a convenient little drawer in front for the remote. Farah’s multicolored bird effigy collection—ceramic, wooden, and paper mâché—on a pine footstool with tapered legs. 32-inch television, seldom used. Five of Deangela’s wildlife photos. An impossibly close chipmunk, an osprey tucking for a dive, a massive cluster of yellow agaric mushrooms, a downward pointed nuthatch on pine bark, and five crows in a dead oak. Surrounded by these images, Deangela could only take it for a short while. Frozen reminders that time amasses a body count. Only Farah ever really used this museum room. At night sometimes. With the dim little table lamp. And a Bible. And a bottle of five-star Barbancourt rum.

An archway connected the living room to the breakfast room, outfitted with a simple oak table that would seat six in a pinch but only had four chairs. The tall white China cabinet that stored the dishes clashed with the oaken table in a way that bothered neither Deangela nor Farah, but about which Farah’s fastidious boyfriend Freddy could never contain at least a passing suggestion to correct. A tattered and stained thrift store refectory table supported a small jungle of potted plants in one corner, all of which Farah referred to as female. “This one, she need more space for the roots.” Farah boiled tea. Deangela stood in the arch leaving Farah to navigate the small kitchen. (Farah became territorial under stress.)

“Sorry,” said Farah, handing Deangela her tea.

“Me, too.”

They stood for a moment in reconciled silence.

“I miss Theodora,” Deangela said. Farah looked up to see her daughter’s eyes brimming. Isis pressed her back against Deangela’s legs.

“I miss her, too, Pick.” She kissed Deangela. Went back to wipe the stove. Deangela wiped at her eyes and nose, and rinsed her hands in the sink.

Farah’s phone pinged in her pants pocket. She seemed relieved when she answered.

“Hiya, Milo.” . . . “Yes.” . . . “I see.” . . . “Correct.” . . . “Okay, bye-bye.”

“That was cryptic,” Deangela said. No reply. “What are you two up to?”

“We goin’ fishin’ together.” Farah started reorganizing the spice cupboard.

“Ha! Milo? He’s eighty-one.”

“Old men fish.”

“Milo’s never wet a hook in his life.”

“He wanna learn.”

“You two are about as subtle as a pipe bomb. Y’all plannin’ somethin’ for my birthday.”

19

Durham, North Carolina
October 1, 2021

A cool, sunny day. Deangela arrived at eleven for her “surprise” birthday party. She smelled the fish panades before she opened the door. Something else, too. Sweet and smoky. Pork.

Co-perpetrators Farah and Milo were waiting in the entry hall with beers in hand. Red Stripe and Pabst respectively. Farah wore a green apron with white caribous all over it. A cluster of bodies loitered in the living room, where Deangela was happily surprised to see Samantha, her lawyer and roommate from college (big with child) and her husband, Ted. Sam and Ted were both bright with everyone. Except one other.

Pregnancy strain? Deangela took note. Relationships. Right.

Also in the gaggle, Tip, her cousin on her father’s side (Tiphaine, Daddy’s sister Amy’s daughter), Tip hugged her with an unlit cigarette in one hand and a lighter in the other, and headed for the back door. Cedar—Deangela’s bestie—was next, dark-skinned, tiny, smaller even than Deangela, a photographer for the Herald. After Deangela was passed around for hugs and happy birthdays, she rejoined Farah in the kitchen.

“Where’s Freddy?” Deangela asked.

“Back yard, burnin’ pig flesh.” Farah sounded abrupt and annoyed.

More relational bliss.

People drifted around a long folding table in the living room. Paper plates, napkins, plastic flatware, powder buns, panades, Belizean pico, black bean and corn salad, chips and guacamole, potato salad, and a hand decorated caramel cake scrolled with “DD’s 30—ain’t she purty.”

“Great shirt,” said Sam. White hibiscus, black background, a missing cinnamon button replaced with a mismatched tan one right between her breasts.

“Great belly,” Deangela replied. “Still mid-November?”

“November fourteenth. A girl.”

“Got a name yet?”

“Janine, after his grandma.” She tipped her head at Ted, who gave a perfunctory smile. Still that tension. Yay, marriage. Deangela reminisced briefly with Sam about their college days, including Deangela’s fall and recovery. Ted pretended from a distance to follow the thread.

Deangela excused herself after a time to look for Milo. Farah told her he was in the back yard.

Deangela let Isis out back to watch with wolfish eyes as Freddy grilled the pork.

Slouched in a lawn chair with a cigarette, cousin Tip watched, too. Tip had Daddy’s dark-lashed aquamarine eyes. Hot mess, Tip. Some feared she’d inherited her grandmother’s and mother’s schizophrenia, but what she had, so far, was an alternating affinity for prescription opioids and crystal methamphetamine. Tip lurched from one trifling man to another, all of them sharing one trait: they confirmed Tip’s own abiding conviction that she herself was a piece of shit. She’d shown up last week, asking Farah to put her up until the rest of a month went past to legally evict the latest asshole allowed to cohabitate in her crappy Hot Springs, Arkansas apartment. The law required her to give him thirty days, and the clock had started when she went to court two weeks ago. She was calm and affectionate today, with pupils like pinpoints. Hydrocodone, up and running. When Tip visited, Farah kept the valuables in a closet safe.

“Happy birthday, kid,” said Milo. He pecked her cheek when he hugged her.

Milo looked like a scarecrow. Clothes loose on a frame shrunken by eight decades of living among the humans. Deangela hid the ripple of fear at his prominence of bone. Another loss to come. He asked how she’d slept after last night’s useless surveillance. She reassured him that she’d gotten at least five hours, while she pulled a coffee cup down from the cupboard, dodging Farah at the stove. Poured herself a lukewarm cup of Santa Rosa blonde.

Freddy, enveloped in fragrant smoke, turned steaming loins, hocks, and chorizo in the back yard. He wore a capacious yellow SpongeBob hoodie with a red apron and nursed his second Miller Lite. He gave Deangela a hug and a “happy birthday,” but seemed preoccupied. Trouble between him and Mama, likely over his stated desire to move in. It wouldn’t have helped matters that Freddy once again today offered to paint the kitchen table white to match the China cabinet.

Romantic love, Deangela thought, two rats’ nests of conscious and unconscious desires, projected on an unknowable other and commingled with contradictory fixations. Sign me up.

She drifted back inside, where she found Cedar with a Red Stripe going through phone pictures on the living room love seat. Deangela flopped down beside her, laying her head on Cedar’s shoulder to look. Some of Cedar’s latest—well-composed photos of urban life. And decay. (It was Cedar who’d taught Deangela photography.) Deangela pulled out her phone and shared recent pictures of colorful fungi from the Shamrock. Cedar was smaller even than Deangela, mahogany dark, and gay. She’d had a crush on Deangela back in the day, but upon learning of her friend’s apparent asexuality, settled for a deep and affectionate friendship that, for Cedar, at least, was always nested in a low-burn sexual tension and a slightly tragic sense of unrequited love.

Deangela had taken Cedar’s photography lessons into her beloved forests to illustrate field guides and calendars and to build her own collection. She’d had two local shows over the years and won the North Carolina Wildlife Federation Photo Competition in 2014 with an Eastern diamondback rattlesnake, its forked tongue caught in midair and curled toward its nostrils.

The birthday party, even with its petty tensions, began to feel like the sun rising after a cold night of grief. Sam and Ted floated through the kitchen to chat with Farah while she finished the last panades and began toasting tortillas on the comal. Tip stood outside next to Freddy, now. They looked like two mesmerized campers gazing into a fire. Isis dozed on the cool grass, having surrendered to her disappointment. Deangela got up to fetch a Barg’s root beer from the fridge, patting Cedar’s knee. Tucking her phone back in her pants pocket, she found the paper scrap Mama had given her.

423-332-6840. Felix Sharpe.

20

Raleigh, North Carolina
October 2, 2021

8:30 a.m. Too early to call this Felix guy?

He picked up on the second ring.

“Hello.”

“Hi, this is Deangela Dale. I was asked to call this number. Mr. Sharpe?”

“I am, Ms. Dale. Thanks for returnin’ my call.” Diffuse southern accent, likely white. Harder to tell these days. High, hoarse voice that could soothe or threaten, depending on the delivery.

“I apologize for not calling earlier.”

“I understand, and happy birthday.”

“Why, thank you . . . umm—”

“Your mom told me.”

“Oh! Well, how can I help you, sir?”

“Felix, please. May we speak in person?”

“Aren’t you in Tennessee?”

“Actually, I’m in Raleigh.”

“Oh my God, I feel terrible now for not having returned your call earlier. Did you tell Mama . . . my mother?”

“No, and don’t worry about it. When might you be free?”

“I’d be free now, but I have a party casualty at my house. [Cedar] She needs to get back to her car when she wakes up.”

Felix laughed softly. “Will she be recovered by lunch?”

“I’ll make sure of it. Where would you like to meet?”

“I’m at the Crabtree Best Western. You know of a good place near here?”

“Oh my, you’re close. Okay, let’s see. Are you on any restrictions?”

“Won’t eat anything that tries to crawl off the plate.”

Deangela laughed. “Okay, how about El Rodeo? It’s right near you.”

“Is twelve okay?”

“Yes sir, I’ll see you there.”

“I’ll get us a table. Just tell them you’re with Felix.”

*

The Tuesday lunch crowd had nearly filled the restaurant.

“Felix?” Deangela said to the hostess, who smiled and pointed to a table by the window.

Felix looked across the room at her. Tall, rangy man, mid-fifties maybe. Long salt and pepper hair on the sides and back of his head with nothing but a high thin band swept back across top. Mustache black, thick as a roll of silver dollars. Sumptuous beard almost successfully concealing a weak chin. Long scar along the right side of his face. Tufts of black and gray hair on his earlobes. Top of the right ear missing. Eyes gray and penetrative. Heavy black brows. Tattered jeans. Lightweight flannel shirt with masses of black and white chest hair creeping from the neckline into the thicket of his beard. He stood and offered his hand. His arm quivered a bit, but his grip was firm with eye contact. She could tell he held back real strength.

“Sit, please,” he said. The waitress arrived promptly. Deangela asked for iced tea. He took water.

“So, why’s someone from Tennessee come to Raleigh to see me?”

“It’s complicated. I need to hire an investigator.”

“Tennessee has investigators, no?”

“As I said, complicated. Hungry?”

“Pretty much always, yeah. I’m getting the grilled fish, so whenever you’re ready.” She grabbed a chip from the basket. Dipped some salsa verde. The waitress brought drinks.

“We’re ready to order,” said Felix. “She’s having grilled fish, and I’ll have the pork verde burrito.” The waitress swept up the menus and left.

Felix dipped a chip. She noticed a tic in his face. An involuntary twitch along his scarred cheekbone. Nerve damage?

“Have to admit, no offense, but I’m feeling a little anxious. Something doesn’t mesh here. You wanna hire an out-of-state 30-year-old investigator from North Carolina to do,” waving her left hand vaguely, “what exactly?”

“I’m investigating something myself,” he said. “Some one. A policeman. In Michigan.”

“Michigan?”

“Yep, and I need your help.”

“This doesn’t make any sense,” she said. “Again, why me? To investigate a cop? In Michigan? My license is for North Carolina.”

“I’ll pay you well, five thousand in advance plus expenses. Off the books, if you like.”

“Um, you just made an illegal solicitation. Sure you wanna do that?”

“I like your shirt,” he deflected. Orange tree-print Hawaiian with grayscale hibiscus bands across the chest and shoulders. Worn over a black long-sleeved tee.

“Thanks. Can we get to the point?”

He looked down.

“There’s a personal connection.”

“To you?” she asked.

“Yes, but to you, too.” Deangela’s face went flat. “At least, to your father.”

She held his eyes on him for a long moment. “Who the hell are you?”

The nearby diners looked.

Felix looked back, trying to formulate an answer. Deangela stepped away from the table. Glared. Turned on her heel and marched to the door.

Felix yanked out his wallet, dropped two twenties on the table, and rushed out behind her.

Deangela leaned on her truck with both hands, head down, like she was about to be frisked. Felix approached cautiously.

“Ms. Dale, I’m sorry. I don’t know how I should have approached this.”

She turned, eyes brimming.

“My dad’s been dead for eleven years. You tell me right now what this is about, and don’t you equivocate with me, mister.” She wiped at her nose with her arm. “How fucking dare you!”

“You want it straight?”

“And fast, because I’m about to leave.”

“This cop I told you about. He was with your dad in Afghanistan.”

“So, what? You decided to investigate him using me? Why? So you could fuck me up in the process?”

“No, no, honestly no. I thought . . . I thought you might be interested. Look, I’ve obviously messed this up. I researched you. You’re smart, right? Like off the charts smart. And there’s some people I can’t talk to who may talk with you.”

“What’s your connection?”

“That’s something I’m afraid I can’t discuss, but I’m tryin’ to get to the bottom of something. Reasons of my own. This guy, this policeman, he’s a bad man. That’s the abbreviated version. And while I’m bein’ as honest as I can with what I can legally tell you, there’s some powerful people who don’t want this guy back in focus. So, I need you as a buffer, a cutout. There’s ways my hands are tied, and while these folks may have a line on me, they won’t have a line on you. And yes, you’ll be delving into matters related to your father, so there’s that. Tell me no, and I disappear. Or give me a week. Five grand, and we’ll see where it goes.”

She stood silently for a long beat.

“I’ll call you,” she said. She climbed in her truck and drove away.

21

Fort Washington, Maryland
October 2, 2021

Farrell was cleaning his boat when the encrypted text came. SIGINT alert. Subject line: FELIX.

He punched in a number. Waited for the authentication request and punched in his code. Pam, the weekender, answered: “CITF, eraser.”

“Finitude,” he replied, “It’s Monty. I’ll be there in an hour.”

He folded the rags, put the lid on the sealant, plopped his gear into an open tool trolley, and pulled the boat bra back over.

*

Harry Haldane and Arthur McInnery were on the secure sat-line now from Raleigh. Arthur did the talking.

“He’s at a hotel by RDU.”

“What’s he doin’ in North Carolina?” Farrell asked.

“You’re going to love this,” said McInnery. “He’s contacted the family of one of that inept detachment.”

“Not lovin’ it at all. Which family?”

“The team sergeant.”

“Fuck! I knew it. Motherfucker’s sick and got religion. Where y’all at now?”

“Outside Crabtree Best Western. He just returned after having the shortest lunch in history with the operations sergeant’s daughter.”

“Stay with him, but outa sight. By tomorrow, I’ll know everything there is to know about daughter dearest. Fuck is he doin’?”

“Should we just handle him now? Save the bother?”

“How long’s he been off the net before this?”

“Three weeks, bit more. His phone was silent until yesterday.”

“So, we don’t know where he’s been, who he’s been with.”

“Correct.”

“And if he disappears, we don’t know what kinda contingencies he has in place. He could auto-message the media, whatever.”

“Okay, also correct.”

“Just stay with ’im.”

22

Raleigh-Durham, North Carolina
October 3, 2021

“Then The Tempter answered the Lord, ‘Skin for skin! All that people have they will give to save their lives. But stretch out your hand now and touch his bone and his flesh, and he will curse you to your face.’ The Lord said to Satan, ‘Very well, he is in your power; only spare his life.’

“The word of the Lord.”

Nine o’clock Mass at St Francis of Assisi.

Deangela and Farah responded. “Thanks be to God.”

*

Milo bore a whimsical expression most times. Even as an octogenarian. Especially as an octogenarian! He’d walked directly into the winds of life, past the part where he took himself too seriously, past the part where he sought “achievements,” past the part where the inevitability of loss created in him a persistent sadness, and into that blessed late stage wherein he felt a kind of amused affection for the absurdities of life and a resigned tolerance for the inescapable shortfalls and stupidities of himself and his fellow human creatures.

He wasn’t wearing his whimsical face today.

He sat at Farah’s kitchen table, mirroring her expression of concern while Deangela recounted yesterday’s unsettling meeting.

“I need you two to hear what he has to say,” she concluded.

“When he comin’?” Farah asked, her face struggling between tough and tearful.

Deangela looked at her watch.

“Noon. Twelve minutes from now. He says.”

“How the hell does he expect you to investigate a Michigan cop with a North Carolina license. And why?” Milo interjected, “What’s the connection to A.D.?”

“He’s playin’ things close to the chest.”

“What is this guy? What does he do?”

“Not sure, Milo. Assuming the cop knew Daddy or something. Where’s Tip?”

“She in the spare room,” Farah said. “Up half the night on the phone and playin’ with the computer. Eyes like pinholes.”

The doorbell.

Isis barked.

“Take ’im in the livin’ room,” Farah said. “Don’ wanna wake Tip.”

Deangela got the door. The others, including an agitated Isis, migrated into Farah’s rum-and-memory room.

The temperature had dropped during the night. Felix wore a black watch cap with an old leather jacket. Deangela reluctantly took the hand he offered and stepped aside to let him enter.

“To the right,” she said.

She closed the door. Turned to see Felix standing in the archway exchanging stares with Milo and Farah while Isis trembled and murmured.

“Go on in,” Deangela said, crowding him forward into the room. “The dog doesn’t bite.” Isis moved cautiously up to sniff Felix’s proffered hand, then stood down. Milo and Farah remained on the sofa, staring. Hostile panel.

“I’m sorry,” Felix protested, “but I can’t tell y’all much.”

“This is my mother,” Farah raised a hand without deflecting her glare, “and this is Milo Harp, the investigator I work for.”

“Work with,” Milo corrected.

Deangela went around Felix. Stood by the sofa.

“If you’re telling me something about my father,” Deangela said, “you’re gonna to tell my mother, too. And Milo’s here to advise me about your little project, which, frankly, sounds as sketchy as a street corner Rolex.”

“You don’t understand,” said Felix, “We may come into contact with extremely sensitive government information.”

“You mean official secrets,” piped in Milo. “Kind you go to jail for.”

“That’s exactly— ” Felix started to say.

“Exactly why I’m advising my young protégé to avoid you like Chernobyl,” Milo interrupted.

“Whaddaya know about my husband, Mr.—?”

“Sharpe. Felix. I understand, but—”

“You talk to all of us, Felix,” said Deangela, “or you can head back to Tennessee or wherever you’re from. Your proposal won’t change the fact that my father’s gone; and I’m not taking on something this questionable without a better story. A true one.”

Felix stood there, stock still except for the tremor in his right hand and the twitch in his cheek. Silence filled the room like a treacherous vapor. A car swished past on the street outside, followed by the clatter of a diesel truck.

“I’m sorry,” he suddenly said, and turned to leave. No one moved as they heard the door gently open and close. They rose and watched out the front window. He got into a white Camry. Didn’t start it. Just sat there. He climbed back out of the car. Chunked the door closed. Stood for a moment before he headed back to the house. Deangela held the door for him, Isis wagging alongside. Milo and Farah returned to the sofa.

“Sit,” Deangela said, indicating the love seat as she settled herself between Milo and Farah.

“You gotta understand what’s at stake here,” he said. “He’s right,” nodding at Milo. “We could rub up on government secrets.” Farah, taken by flush of anxiety, clutched Deangela’s hand. Deangela and Milo threw each other a glance. “This Michigan policeman I need to investigate,” Felix went on. “As I said, he was with your father in Afghanistan. He was a bad man then. I believe he’s still a bad man. My reasons for wanting him are my own. That has to stay that way. There’s a chance we may find things out about your dad,” turning to Farah, “your husband. But that’s not my primary concern. Maybe this was a bad idea, but I think you’re the right person here, and I’ll pay you handsomely.”

Milo grunted.

“Mama?” Deangela queried, Farah’s hand trembling in hers. Farah looked at Deangela and nodded. Deangela turned to Milo.

“I’m not family,” said Milo. “Maybe I should leave.”

“You’re family,” said Farah and Deangela at once. “You stay,” added Deangela.

“I’ll do it,” Deangela said. Farah squeezed her hand so hard it hurt.

“Then you and I need to talk outside. Thank y’all.”

Tip, who’d been listening from the hallway, slipped back into her bedroom.

“Get in,” he said, opening the passenger door. The Camry a rental. He went around and squeezed into the driver’s seat. “Don’t look behind you, but check the mirror. About a block and a half back, you’ll see a gray Suburban pointing away from us. See it?”

“I do.”

“They’ve been on me since I left the hotel. Those guys we gotta lose. They think they got me, us, right now. Which is good, because they don’t know that we know.”

“Wow, you really are pullin’ me into some bullshit here.”

“You can stop now, get out, I drive away, you never hear from me again. I’ll give you five hundred bucks for your trouble and we call it quits.”

She sighed. Drummed her thighs. She looked at him. He looked back.

“So,” she said, “how do we get rid of them?”

“In steps. Open the glove box. Take two of those burners and that envelope. That’s ten thousand dollars.” She looked up at him. “Came into some money, okay. See the notebook and pen?” She nodded. “Write.” She started. “Those burners talk only to one another. Hand me the other one. This is mine. Put in that number.” She did. “Show me another one.” He pecked in the number. “That’s yours. That last one, that’s for Milo. He can talk to you mom. I don’t need to know that number. You do. You only contact home through that one. When Milo gets a text from you that you need to talk, he and your mom need to get out of her house to call back. Explain it to him. He’ll get it. From now on, we use only cash. Can you get Milo to rent two cars for us? I’ll pay his regular fees.”

“Is her house bugged?”

“Not yet. It will be soon. About which we do nothing. These guys need to think they’re slick. Brief Mom and Milo in the back yard after I leave, just in case. Let ’em know, exactly zero conversations, spoken or on regular phones, referring to me or what we’re doin’. Your cover story’s you’re on a wildlife shoot in South Carolina for a week. Have Milo and your mom leave the two cars on the roof level of the parking garage on Science Drive between twelve and twelve-thirty tomorrow, keys behind the left front tires. He pays with cash. Have ’em put pink post-it notes on the insides of the rear windows. You know anyone who can pick ’em up at that McDonalds?”

“Mama’s working tomorrow.”

“Shit. Okay, anyone else you trust to do it?”

“Cedar. My friend.”

“Cedar won’t be curious?”

“You kiddin’? Cedar’ll be curious as hell, but she’s also loyal. And smart. A journalist. She won’t mess it up. I tell her to, she’ll take a secret to her grave.”

“Meet her today, somewhere public. Okay, they’ll put a tracker on your truck tonight. Don’t stay up waitin’ for it.”

“I have detection equipment.”

“Don’t bother. It’ll be easy to find in the morning. These guys’ll be on me for now, not you, so remove the tracker and place it on a neighbor’s vehicle. Then call an Uber on the burner, somewhere a few blocks from your house, and be at the parking garage at 12:45. Use the northeast vehicle entrance. When you walk in, look to the right. If you see a giant X in chalk anywhere, you break off, go home, and we regroup. Got it?”

“Yeah. How you gonna get rid of this rental?”

“Drop it at the airport, kill my phone, break ’em off on foot.”

“Countersurveillance.”

“Very good.”

“Milo’s a good teacher.”

23

Raleigh-Durham, North Carolina
October 4, 2021

Farrell: “What happened? Put me on speaker.”

Haldane: “Tell us what you know about the little halfrican.”

Farrell: “Why?”

McInnery: “Why!? Because she just led us on a bootless errand.”

Farrell: “You lost her?”

McInnery: “And him. Her mother went to work at the hospital.”

Farrell: “Fuck.”

Haldane: “Boss, we had rocks on her and her momma’s vehicles. Both drive pickups, by the way. Black bitches in pickup trucks. World’s gone crazy. Anyway, we’re up and loiterin’ around a gas station by her place, the daughter’s, when the rock starts movin’. Goes right past us, but we ain’t seein’ her Tacoma. We figure we just went all human-error-eye-off-the-ball and shit, so we follow the pings. Leads us to an office building seven miles away—”

McInnery: “She found the tracker and put it on another car last night. We’re burned, so we switch to Sharpe’s rental, but we now suspect that he, too, will lead us astray. Nonetheless, we see the rental returning to the airport, so we decamp to the airport in the vain hope of reestablishing contact.”

Farrell: “I take it you did not.”

McInnery: “Correct. Which is why we need to know more about Deangela Dale.”

Farrell: “Yeah, well, she’s interesting. Apparently, a wildlife photographer and a licensed private detective.”

Haldane: “Shit makes more sense now—”

Farrell: “The question is, how’d they burn you in the first fuckin’ place, Harry! Just listen. She started out workin’ for a guy named Milo Harpe. Some private dick in Durham. Legal investigator. Ex-cop. Older than dirt. That’s why she’s makin’ monkeys outa y’all. She’s got tradecraft. And she was some kinda fuckin’ child genius. Quit college at eighteen after a plagiarism charge. So, she’s bent somehow, but she’s got more knowledge than an encyclopedia and speaks ten fuckin’ languages. Don’t underestimate Halfrica again. Or Felix Sharpe for that matter. Speaking of which, where the fuck is he?”

McInnery: “Tracker went to the airport. Then his phone went black.”

Farrell: “Okay, pretty fuckin’ obvious you guys were burnt.”

McInnery: “So, what now, Boss?”

Farrell: “We’ll be up on her and her mama’s phones within the hour. You two stay on mom. And keep an eye out for the geriatric detective.”

24

Manassas, Virginia
October 5, 2021

Adjoining rooms in a fleabag Felix secured the night before. They both checked for bedbugs. Bright side? The Gujarati manager accepted a bribe of a hundred dollars along with a three-hundred-dollar security deposit to let the room without a credit card. Deangela woke at just after five. Made motel percolator coffee. Weak as shit and tasted like mop water.

There was a light drizzle outside, and it was an unseasonably chilly fifty degrees.

She showered and met Felix at six-thirty. His hair was all askew. Wearing the same old leather jacket over a tan zip-hoodie. Droopy jeans with frayed hems. She’d donned Wranglers that even had a hammer loop. Red fleece unzipped over a pink guayabera. Dingy white baseball cap with a tightly bent bill. Blue jay embroidered on the front.

They went to a family restaurant, where she ordered the “Costa Rican Tipico,” a loaded omelet with queso blanco on the side, rice and beans, and fried plantains. Felix ate an eggs Benedict platter, with avocados, fruit, and home fries.

“Tomorrow, you’ll see Connie Mason?”

Felix was cagey about why he didn’t want in on the interview. Keep your secrets, Felix.

Connie Mason, journalist. She’d been in Afghanistan at the same time as Deangela’s father. Now she was working on something with a gold-star family.

“She confirmed last night,” Deangela said. “I’ll start the research after breakfast.”

“Good. Lemme know what you find out. Done some myself. We can share notes. Soon, we’ll head up to Dundee, Michigan. Get rooms there. That’s gonna be our operations base. Safe house. Whatever. It’s around half an hour from Skegum. Meanwhile, be thinkin’ of a surveillance plan for Patrolman Pedro Correa.”

*

When I was a reporter in Afghanistan in the Summer of 2010, I dutifully composed a story repeating the prepared talking points delivered the day prior by an Army Public Affairs Officer. That story was about a nighttime battle between US forces and Taliban fighters a two-hour drive out of Kabul in which two American special operations troops were killed. One was the team’s senior noncommissioned officer, Master Sergeant Abner Dale, and the other the team’s senior engineer, Sergeant First Class Gene Pollard. Both, according to the story, were killed by the Taliban during a ferocious firefight in a village named Charikar. That story may have been just that: a story.”

2010. The Tea Party’s debut. White men with guns and cosplay uniforms patrol the Arizona border. Deep Water Horizon explodes and poisons the Gulf of Mexico. Haiti is further devastated by a 7.0 earthquake. Wikileaks exposes US war crimes in Iraq. General Stanley McChrystal is fired as Commander of troops in Afghanistan. Republicans hammer the midterms. Ryan happens. Deaths that year: Leslie Nielson, Dennis Hopper, Rue McLanahan, Jimmy Dean, Tony Curtis, Lena Horne, Jean Simmons, J.D. Salinger, Teddy Pendergrass, Lynn Redgrave, Bobby Farrell, Benoit Mandelbrot, José Saramago . . . and Deangela father, Abner “A.D.” Dale. Eleven years hence, she was reading Children’s Kingdom, Connie Mason’s blog, and the worst year of her life was back. With a bullet.

Her father’s heroic last moments may have been a fiction.

In Vietnam, soldiers were sometimes killed by “friendly fire.” That term was eventually replaced by “fratricide.” No one knows what the ratio is between enemy fire and fratricide in modern combat, but every modern military institution accepts a certain degree of fratricide as the cost of doing business.

Covering up fratricide can also be part of that business. I was a journalist in Afghanistan. I reported everything the military’s public affairs officers passed along to us as unvarnished facts.

Sergeant First Class Pollard’s death in Afghanistan by friendly fire began as a rumor. For weeks, the members of the units who’d been sworn to silence whispered among themselves. Then they were returned home. They drank. They confided in loved ones. They argued. And bits slipped out, took root, and grew into that rumor, which by 2015 reached the ears of Heather Poloczec, Gene Pollard’s mother. Last year, she contacted me after discovering my byline on my dutiful regurgitation of the PAO narrative regarding that fateful mission in the predawn hours of July 14, 2010 when the twenty-seven-year-old noncommissioned officer with a wife and little boy took his last breath.

Deangela used a VPN and Tor browser. Double blind. She bookmarked the blog. No mention of Correa. She’d see Connie Mason tomorrow, but Correa had virtually nothing online. Her searches inevitably listed an actor by the same name or a Spanish photographer who lived in Brussels or the ex-President of Ecuador.

She stood. Walked around the motel room to stretch her legs. Okay, he was a cop. Cops file police reports. If she couldn’t track his biography, she might be able to infer something from his eight-year career.

Skegum Police. No-go online, shit! She could pay for the reports in person if requested in advance. Okay, but asking only for the reports filed by Correa? No doubt someone would call Correa aside and say, “Hey, this chick is asking for all your reports.” Was there a backdoor here? Table that.

Her head hurt.

Felix had given her Correa’s military records. Third generation Puerto Rican, born in Long Island, 1983. Attained the rank of staff sergeant. Separated honorably from service, 6^th Special Forces. One combat tour, Afghanistan, 2009-2010. List of de rigueur awards for simply having been there . . . one bronze star with V device (valor) for the action in which her father had been killed.

She hit the software. Lexus-Nexus, Spokeo, Net Detective, the whole shebang.

Correa had applied to multiple New York academies. Long wait lists. Applied to out-of-state academies. Accepted to Wayne County Regional—Livonia, Michigan—2012. Graduated in July. In-processed at Skegum in August. Appeared in six local news stories: arrests in (1) bar brawl, 2014; (2) meth-house bust, 2014; (3) fatal shooting of homeless man, 2016; (4) non-fatal domestic shooting, wife shot husband, 2018; (5) missing child recovery, custody conflict, 2018; (6) fatal armed citizen shooting of mentally ill man brandishing a knife in the local Walmart (during Covid lockdowns, of course), 2020.

On impulse, she applied all the software services to her own father. No surprises, until . . . Monterrey amateur-sleuth blog, “N-ves-T-gate-Monterrey.” Little picture of a gate. August, 2010. “GI killed in parking lot of local bar and grill.” Steven Ricks, 25. The a-sleuth had some kind of inside line with the local cops. Just a note.

Local police ran into another dead end recently on the investigation of the homicide of Army Sergeant Steven Ricks last year in the parking lot of the Trident Room bar and grill on University Circle. Ricks was stabbed in the throat with what appears to have been a pencil on December 30^th. Ricks was a student at the nearby Defense Language Institute. New evidence discovered in last month pointed to another language student, Army Master Sergeant Abner Dale, as a person of interest, but upon contacting the Department of the Army, investigators were told that Dale had died in action this July in Afghanistan. The case is now cold.

“Holy shit.” She stood, turned, took two steps, turned, went back, sat again. “Holy fucking shit!”

2009? He’d just left Delta.

Something had happened there. At Delta. Of course, nothing that happened there was shared. Delta’s breakfast menu was classified. Whatever it was, it had shaken him. He’d gone to California to study Farsi, a peculiar request that shouldn’t have been granted, given that he had less than three years left before retirement. By then, of course, his mental defenestration was already on track.

Back to the software and subs.

Steven Michael Ricks, Born March 11, 1987. Died December 30, 2009. Iraq, 2007-8, 17^th Military Police Brigade (Airborne). Special Forces Qualification Course, 2008-9. Defense Language Institute, studied Tagalog, 2009.

17^th Military Police Brigade. Iraq. Camp Bucca.

Ding.

Camp Bucca. Infamous American-run detention center. Sustained and systematic abuse. War crimes.

She took out the burner.

“Felix.”

“Yeah.”

“Would you please come to my room?”

“Ten minutes.”

*

She’d changed into Duke blue nylon shorts and an oversized plain white tank top without a bra.

She led him to the laptop and the blog post.

“You know anything about this?” He sat. A frown clouded his face as he read it.

“Aren’t we looking into Correa?”

“I’m working on that, but what do you make of this?” Felix went still. She marked his hesitation. “What? You know something.”

“Not whether it’s valid or not.” He took an elastic band out of his pocket. Pulled his hair back into a ponytail, exposing the clipped right ear and the scar cutting a ragged furrow from ear through beard. “We’re venturing into that classified territory again, but I have no clue on this one.”

“Look, I won’t put you on the spot with all this classification shit, but it’s pretty obvious to me by now that you were somehow part of this world. Did you know him?”

“No.”

“Because I saw some pretty disturbing changes in him, starting back in 2009.”

“What kind of changes?”

“Why should you care? You’re looking into Correa.”

“Just curious.”

“Yeah, right.”

“Whaddaya got on Correa?”

“Besides the records you gave me? Next to nothing. He’s not even registered to vote. Unmarried. No criminal record. Living at 673 Wexford in Skegum.”

“An address is good, right?”

“It can give us a place to begin surveillance. I’ll googlemap and check for surround shots on the real estate sites. Maybe put your thinking cap on about something, help me out here. We might request every police record he filed. It’s open source, but requires an in-person request.”

“Too risky.”

“Agreed, that’s why I’m wondering. Is there someone else who could do it?”

“Still too risky. He’ll know someone’s investigating him. We don’t want that.”

“So, no.”

“No. For now. I’ll keep thinkin’ on it.”

“You hungry?”

“So hungry my belly think’s my throat’s been cut.”

She smiled. It wasn’t real.

“Meet you in ten outside?”

*

October 4, 2021
Raleigh-Durham, North Carolina

Farrell: “Pack your bags, boys.”

Haldane: “What’s up?”

Farrell: “They fucked up is what. Halfrica called Connie Mason.’

McInnery: “Who?”

Farrell: “Used to be a stringer for the New York Times. She was in Afghanistan during the Charikar mission and the Zama incident. Dry drunk. Huntin’ absolution by diggin’ for dirt. She communicates with Gene Pollard’s mama. We been up on her for months. Call came in from a burner. Now we got the number. Two numbers. Felix and Halfrica. They’re right here in Virginia. Some diseased flophouse in Manassas. Halfrica’s gonna be at Mason’s house in Gainesville tomorrow. Textin’ the address now.”

McInnery: “Excellent.”

Farrell: “Anything on Mommy?”

Haldane: “She’s just workin’. She has a boarder though. Rough lookin’ white girl who left the house yesterday. I tailed her. She scored some meth up in Northwest Durham.”

Farrell: “Interesting. Pictures?”

Haldane: “I’ll send ’em.”

*

In the year 2000, Arthur McInnery graduated from High School in Burns, Oregon. The “Home of the Highlanders” graduated eighty seniors that year, and six of them were his cousins. Arthur was a member of the Burns football squad and an A student.

He’d been raised by both parents—his father a freight pilot and his mother a librarian—in this town of around two and a half thousand. One of Burns’ nicer homes. Gray ranch house, just outside of town, surrounded by seven spindly junipers. Three well-kept out-buildings. Cedar rail fence with two wagon wheels decorating the entryway. All around, miles of flat, semi-arid scrub, hatted along the northern horizon by a high desert butte.

Arthur had a sister, Kathleen, four years his senior. She bullied him out of boredom, their bland lackadaisical parents seldom intervening, until she graduated and went to Oregon State in Corvallis to study library and information science. Every time he hit another player during football practice and games, he imagined it was Kathleen.

He’d hated Burns for as long as he could remember. He was ecstatic when he left to attend Linfield University in McMinnville, a town of thirty-five thousand that felt like a metropolis after Burns. He studied political science, enrolled in the school’s ROTC program, and acquired a series of three girlfriends—Esme Littlefield, Carol Harvey, and Francesca Hall. Each romance ended with Arthur being dumped, in equal parts because he was a controlling emotional bully, and because of the steroids that had grown him into an insufferably aggressive and vain “blonde beast.” He was pretty. But word got around. Mean fucker.

In 2004, he was commissioned as a second lieutenant in the Army. Assigned as a platoon leader in the 10^th Mountain Division at Fort Drum near Watertown, New York. On January 7, 2005, he boarded an Air Force C-5 and deployed to Afghanistan along the border with Pakistan. In 2006 and 2007 he was deployed to Northern Iraq as a Company Executive Officer, and in 2008 he was promoted to Captain and given command of a Company in Iraq, followed by a six-month hiatus in Fort Drum, whereupon he was redeployed to Kunar Province, Afghanistan in 2009.

In Kunar, he became enamored of a fellow Captain, Quiana Fuller. Female S-4 Officer. Battalion Staff. Flirtation for a time led to one secretive sexual encounter in a stone ruin on their makeshift base. Fuller ended things after that. Explained that she was using no birth control. That it was too risky and difficult. That it could jeopardize their careers, especially hers, given she was married and the Army prosecuted adultery. He didn’t respond well to the rejection. His dismay was amplified—for reasons he himself didn’t entirely understand—because she was black.

He began an obsessive campaign of harassment. It finally drove her to confess and report him to the Army SHAARP, or Sexual Harassment and Assault Response Program. By 2010, in the wake of two investigations and one appeal, he was eased out of the Army.

Two months after his separation, he joined Blackwater and returned to Iraq. As a contract mercenary, the money was good, and he enjoyed greater freedom as well as insulation from accountability. This was when he started killing. Not firing back during combat. Shooting pedestrians and “suspicious persons.” Executing people on their knees. Strangling a whore. For lots of contractors, drink soothed their conscience or added that little hedonistic kick. Arthur drank only in moderation. He worked out diligently. He slept like a baby. As to pleasure, nothing compared to a kill. Killing aroused him. Sexually. In a way that nothing before ever had. Why would he dull the revisitation of each experience with alcohol?

In 2017, he was recruited from Blackwater by a small and nameless new unit deep within the DOD’s Counter-Intelligence Task Force, headed by a guy named Farrell. No one knew his first name. No rank, no title. Just Farrell. Or “Sir.” Farrell somehow knew of Arthur’s erotic predispositions. Far from being an impediment to employment, Farrell counted it an advantage.

*

Harry Haldane wasn’t “Harold,” but Harry—right there on his 1985 birth certificate. Drunken-ass father wanted to name him Hairy, always the joker old Ben Haldane; but his 19-year-old mother, Lorraine, with the insistent support of the attending physician, compromised with “Harry.”

Ben was taken down by pancreatic cancer eight years later. A relief for Lorraine. He’d been too weak in the final months to beat her ass any more, and she’d cashed out with $75,000 in life insurance.

Harry wasn’t too broken up either. Old Ben was an equal opportunity abuser, beating Harry’s ass on flimsy pretexts while in his cups, and even trying some sexual shit with him when he was seven, to which husky little Harry had responded with a baseball bat to the skull when Ben had passed out. It was during the exam at the Emergency Room that the doctor saw Ben’s yellowed eyes, brown piss, skin rashes, and pale orange shit stains. Ben was admitted with a severe concussion and tested. Diagnosed the next day after a scan with pancreatic adenocarcinoma. The physician estimated Ben’s remaining life to be around six months. It was exactly 183 days until, on his last legs, an exhausted Lorraine assisted him in his passage with a triple dose of morphine.

They lived in Louisville afterwards. Lorraine kept two jobs most times. Managed a few boyfriends along the way. One of Ben’s beatings had rendered her sterile, so Harry had no siblings. He pretty much raised himself. He was a scrapper, and he’d been suspended multiple times in school for fighting, in spite of being a somewhat better than average student.

In 2002, he took a bus to the nearest recruiting station and joined the Marine Corps. The 9-11 attacks were fresh in everyone’s memory The military was beefing up. He finished Boot Camp and his infantry training before the end of the year. In October 2003, he was deployed to Iraq.

On March 31, 2004, in the wake of a series of deadly overreactions by the 82^nd Airborne Division in the city of Fallujah, killing and wounding scores of civilians, a group of Blackwater mercenaries accompanying a convoy through the city of Fallujah was ambushed by Iraqi insurgents using a roadside bomb. The ambush killed four of the contractors, who the media referred to as “civilian employees.” The Iraqi resistance posted photos of themselves celebrating around the corpses and burned-out vehicles, and the American public’s response was pure bloodlust.

The resulting pressure on the US government led to the development of a battle plan to “pacify” Fallujah. Lance Corporal Harry Haldane became a participant in this ill-fated operation.

Formerly US-tolerant Fallujah had become increasingly hostile to the careless occupation forces, which by March of that year were headed by the 1^st Marine Expeditionary Force—Haldane’s unit. The operation escalated into a full-scale disaster, inflicting heavy casualties on civilians, insurgents, and occupying forces alike, and provoking ferocious attacks against US forces throughout the country. The US was forced to withdraw from Fallujah on the first day of May to a nearby base called Camp Barahia. One year to the day before this ignominious withdrawal, President George W. Bush has stood on the deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln before a banner proclaiming “Mission Accomplished,” and declared a successful conclusion to US military operations in Iraq.

Haldane went with the flow. As a scout-sniper in Fallujah, he’d been credited with nine confirmed kills during the engagement, making him a legend in his own Company. It was, up until then, in spite of being a military debacle and an embarrassment to the national masculinity, the highest point in Harry’s life. He was just fine here.

It was returning stateside that was difficult.

He’d made one more, and far less eventful, deployment to Iraq before his enlistment expired in 2006. Upon separation from service, he found a job delivering pizza and moved back in with his mother, now 40-years old with a new boyfriend, William “Billy” Bernard, a tree removal “specialist” and retailer of marijuana and Ecstasy, with political tendencies that ran to Klan.

It didn’t take long before Billy became the dog to Harry’s cat after Harry realized Billy was sponging off his (still) slavishly hard-working mother.

Billy was strong, a wiry man ten years his mother’s junior, and he figured taking Harry on wasn’t much of a challenge; but when it came to it one night, after Harry asked if he didn’t have a house of his own, Billy discovered that inside the soft exterior of ever-chubbier Harry was a bulldozer who kept grinding bloodily in past Billy’s punches and kicks until Billy was exhausted, whereupon Harry proceeded to break his jaw, his wrist, and three ribs as well as burst an eardrum. Billy reported it as a mugging, after Harry reminded him what he knew about his little pharma-enterprise. Lorraine kept Billy, and threw Harry out of the house.

Harry got a shitty one-room apartment he couldn’t afford. Applied for employment with Blackwater, where they started their operators at $500 a day when they were “downrange,” meaning Iraq, Afghanistan, and Colombia. He was hired a month and a half later. He’d been to Afghanistan twice and Iraq once again by the time he met a new Blackwater recruit in 2010, an ex-Army officer named Arthur McInnery. Don’t, people advised him, make fun of his name or his educated way of speaking. Arthur McInnery was as dangerous and effective as he was bughouse nuts. They became a kind of “psycho team” in Eric Prince’s band of hired guns, and when Arthur was approached for a new secret posting with full government bennies in 2017, Harry went along for the ride.

25

Northern Virginia
October 7, 2021

While the world hung on Kavanaugh and Kanye, Dangela nursed a cup of death-strength light roast. She knifed through traffic approaching Gainesville on I-66. Civil War country. Both Battles of Bull Run. The place hummed and honked with commodified history and denial.

Exit 40. South on 15. Left onto Washington. Connie Mason’s apartment was just past Jefferson. Mason’s place was a mini, one bed, one bath. 750 square feet (research). You could’ve rented twice that space for the price in Raleigh without the crack houses next door. Lawn, dried out green. Polka dots of dog piss grass burns and litter. Dirty green metal mailbox with a scabby contact sticker of a chickadee, next to a cheap door—off-white stamped metal, fake wood grain, scratched all to hell on the bottom.

Dog, guessed Deangela. Yappy little scratchy one. There was garbage nearby. Deangela could smell a dumpster on the breeze, one with dirty diapers. The doorbell was cracked plastic. Electrocution hazard? Deangela knocked. Someone in the parking lot blasted the throttle on a Harley. She knocked again. Second rap, Connie Mason was standing in the door leaning on a black metal cane. Past three in the afternoon, and she was in tartan green pajamas. Gray-blonde hair, long, pulled off her face in limp ponytail. She smiled and told Deangela to come in. Stale tobacco smoke.

“I’m a smoker, sorry.”

Connie Mason was pale. And bitten. Tired, kind eyes in a worry-lined face that looked more than her 43 (Deangela had looked it up). Hoarse bark from the dog, who approached the invader cautiously: unlikely mix of terrier and pug from the looks of it. His tail was partly lowered, but there was an expectant wag on deck. Not yappy at all . . . sweet.

“It’s okay,” Deangela responded, offering the dog a sniff of her hand. “I appreciate you seeing me.” Connie Mason closed the door and returned an unexpectedly firm handshake. Bitten, but grownup.

“Thanks for coming. I have as many questions as you, I’m afraid.”

She led her guest into a cramped space piled with books, papers, file boxes, and dirty dishes. A bar of light was thrust through the kitchen window, igniting twirls of suspended dust.

Connie hitched around the cane, right leg nearly listless.

Deangela raised her finger to her lips to silence her host and produced a wireless RFD and bug detector. Connie knitted her brows with a questioning smirk. Deangela motioned her near and whispered, “I need to walk through for a minute and check for surveillance technology.”

Connie nodded, amused.

Deangela found the first one within two minutes. Transmitter, Connie’s computer. The second in the outlet under her little breakfast bar. The last, an outlet next to her bed. Connie’s amusement transmuted into something between fear and anger.

Deangela took a little screwdriver from her bag. Worked it around the edges of the laptop to pop the keyboard cover. In seconds, she produced a small, shiny device and placed it on a pile of paper on the bar. Then she unscrewed each of the power outlets, Repeated the process with two more devices. A techy somewhere was startled by a squeal as Deangela set the three transmitters next to one another.

“Got any aluminum foil?” Deangela whispered.

Connie opened a drawer with plastic wrap, parchment paper, sandwich bags, and foil. Deangela held her hands apart. About two feet. Connie ripped off a sheet. Handed it to Deangela. Deangela crushed the bugs into a tight aluminum ball, carried them to the front door, cracked it, blocking the dog with her foot, dropped the aluminum ball on the front stoop, and stomped it. Closed the door.

“Clear,” she said. “I’ll toss it on the way out. But your phone and your computer are compromised. They’ve got access, whoever it is, through software or the provider. So’s mine. I called you yesterday.” Deangela took the burner out of her pocket and popped out the battery.

“I am so pissed right now.”

“You should be.”

“Sit.”

“Thanks.” Deangela sat on a tan sofa between a precarious box of papers and some kind of doggie pad. “Someone in the government’s interested. What’s puppy’s name?”

Connie gave a relieved laugh. “Hardly a puppy. Vincent’s nine.”

Vincent alerted to his name, drawing nearer to Deangela.

“He’s a rescue. Picked him up five and a half years ago after I got sober.”

Deangela raised her hand (testify). “Mine was weed.”

Connie pulled up one of the two chairs from under a drop-leaf table, the only open surface in the room.

“Can I get you something?” she asked. “I’m about to have coffee.”

“I’ve had so much caffeine you could run Christmas lights off me. Water’s fine, thanks. Speaking of which, may I use your bathroom?”

“Certainly. Right there.” Thumbing behind her at the leftmost of two doors.

Deangela did need to pee, but she also took a quiet peek into the medicine cabinet. Clonazepam, T-4s with codeine, melatonin, Lunesta, and Tramadol. Anxiety, pain, and insomnia.

“Liquid in, liquid out,” Deangela quipped coming out. Connie put on a Moka pot, cane leaning against the kitchen cabinets. Deangela sat. Left her notebook in the pocket of the khaki Bean traveler’s vest she’d gotten from her dad. Over a white long sleeve T and a black-and-white Pacific Legend flower print.

Connie’s coffee pot hissed. Deangela accepted a bottle of refrigerated water.

“How’d you hear about me? I was almost ready to contact more families.” Connie poured. Her spoon tinkled as she stirred sugar. “And where’d you learn all this spooky bug-detection stuff?”

“I’m an investigator. Someone hired me to look into it. But I have a personal interest. My father was Abner Dale.”

“Oh! Oh my! Man? woman?”

“What?”

“Your client. Man or woman? Or is this personal?”

“Man. That’s all I can say. Confidentiality.”

“I get that. Well, you certainly have my attention now.” She sat across from Deangela, good leg pressed against the injured, tiny cup perched above her knees, face tight now with concern and curiosity.

“So . . .” Deangela hesitated, then dove in. “So, you’ve obviously touched a nerve with someone, but I’m not clear on what you do . . . what you’re doing. That’s not exactly . . . I mean, why are you investigating the Army? This presumed fratricide?”

“I’m a journalist. Was. It’s a drinking culture. I was really good at it, drinking.” Deangela saw the confession coming—AA culture, instant and easy vulnerability. Accent: Tidewater, the edges sanded down. “I was a shit journalist, but that’s true of most of us.” Bitter chuckle. “Anyway, a year and half after Afghanistan . . . I was in Kabul when your dad . . . sorry.” Deangela looked at her own shoes. “I was driving home from a party in Norfolk, Navy family you see, and I fell asleep at the wheel. Clipped a delivery truck head-on with my left headlight out by Colonial Heights. The car did a front flip. Shattered my pelvis and right femur.” Her eyes began to well. “They say I missed killing a woman and her twins by inches. Charged with drunk driving. Lost my license and my job. The insurance lasted for three more months, though. Covered some of the hospital bills and surgeries.”

“Sorry.”

“’S’okay, hon. Glad I didn’t kill anyone. Anyway, after two years of battling bureaucrats, I got my disability. That and some freelancing keeps me out of the gutter.”

“What do you think happened?”

“I’m a drunk.”

“No, I mean what happened with my father. And the Pollard case?”

“Ah, that. Course.” She emptied the little cup with a sigh after. Set it on cluttered coffee table. “I’m looking into Gene Pollard’s death. For his mother. She’s paid me a bit, not much, but I’m also doing it as a kind of amends.”

“Amends?”

“Ninth step. AA?”

“I know, but amends for what exactly?”

She sighed again. Raised her left hand, stop gesture, dropped it. “I was . . . ‘a stenographer for power,’ a French colleague called it, right before he was killed at the same time as your dad. I drank. Paralytically. I reported what the government said. I suspect I reported a lot of lies.”

“My dad was killed in combat,” Deangela said, “along with this other man, Gene. You’re saying this is untrue?”

Vincent edged up to smell Deangela’s hand again. She sneaked in a head stroke.

Connie stood. Hopped over to the window without her cane. Vincent jumped and followed. She grunted to lift a cardboard file organizer with one surprisingly strong arm.

“This is all the FOIA material that Heather got. Gene Pollard’s mother. Copies anyway.” She dropped it next to her chair. Sat back down. “I can get you copies if you’ll pay for the copy costs. I’m pretty strapped right now.”

Deangela got up and squatted next to her. Opened the box. Flipped through the files.

“What exactly do you know?” Deangela asked.

Connie cut her eyes and flashed a rueful smile. “Gets tricky here. The rumor was that Gene, one of your dad’s men on that team, didn’t die from enemy fire.”

“Okay, but isn’t that common in combat? Friendly fire?” Deangela sat back on the sofa. Not sure what the big deal is . . . I mean him being killed is a big deal, but isn’t that, like, bad luck, fortunes of war, battlefield fog, and all that?”

“It’s a big deal to them. The armed services. They’re exquisitely sensitive about [air quotes] public relations and they’re hard pressed to admit errors. Or crimes. But there were other things off about this mission, about the whole task force at Camp Virtue. They called it that.” She barked a laugh. No quail in Quail Grove. No virtue in Camp Virtue. We name things after what we kill. “Several things happened. At once. And this was in an area that was relatively quiet. Very near Kabul, in fact. Twenty kilometers away, maybe less. The really intense things were happening in Helmand and up along the Pakistani border.

“So, then there’s this [air quotes again] mission. They called it a huge success. Killing some Taliban bigwig or whatever. Your dad and Gene Pollard were supposedly killed that night.”

“Wait, what do you mean, supposedly?”

“Coming to that. Anyway, the next day, two contractors are killed in downtown Kabul, where the threat’s perceived as nearly non-existent. Rumors start circulating. They’re found dead in a brothel with a Chinese man, a pimp. It all sounds very Paul Theroux. Next morning, our French colleague, Gaston Villeneuve from Nouvel Observateur, is blown up with his Afghan interpreter. Car bomb right outside our hotel.” Her eyes welled. “This is called accidental. Gaston, not the bomb. They say Gaston’s in the wrong place at the wrong time. But here’s this pacified sector, half hour from the capital, and in 36 hours, four Americans, a Chinese pimp, and a French reporter are all killed. Doesn’t scan. The team’s already back in Camp Virtue. Here’s the thing, though. First, they report one friendly KIA. They only report two the following day.”

“Pollard and my dad?”

“The identities only come days later. They have to notify families first. But yeah. First day, they only report one fatality. The second one corresponds to the day after, the same day as the contractors, the pimp, and our colleague.”

“So, two possibilities. They get the number wrong the first day. Whatever reason. Or someone on the team, along with the other, what? Four people? Dies apart from the mission the following day. Pollard or my dad.”

“Yes.”

“Three more possibilities then. One, two, maybe three, unrelated incidents. Contractors and Chinese guy. French guy. Possible second American, Pollard or my dad. More than one incident related. Or all incidents related.”

“Correct.”

“Then the key is to get someone talking.”

“Correct again.”

Deangela wasn’t sure yet if she followed. She got up, hauled the box over to the sofa and sat. Vincent jumped up and grunted when she smoothed back his fur.

“Okay, what can Pollard’s death by possible fratricide have to do with pimps and contractors and journalists?”

“Not sure. You have to be there. Strange things happen all the time. But this! Anomalies within anomalies. At least three sites, if the rumors about the brothel were true. I think they were. We hear about this place. With very young girls. Like twelve or thirteen. Some of our male colleagues, journalists and NGO guys, they’re johns, too. Men can be so fucking disgusting. Sorry.” Deangela waved it away. “The ‘Chinese Restaurant’ they called it. Then the hotel bombing and this mission with your dad. There’s something I know I don’t know. A connection.”

“What all’s in this box?” asked Deanglea, lifting a thick file and thumbing through. The dog tried to push his head back under her hand.

“Vincent took to you fast,” said Connie. “So, when Heather FOIAed the DOD, they did an investigation. They investigate themselves, but supposedly using an independent Inspector General. Those are the statements taken and the summaries of that investigation, along with pages of notes and questions that Heather and I included.”

Deangela looked at the sheets. They were brindled with black redactions. She made an involuntary noise, “Pfuh!”

“Yep. Around sixty-five percent of it’s redacted. Security, they say. There’s notes in the big red file where we jumped back and forth trying to fill in blanks. They’re indexed by page number and line. We had a lot of questions. Not much joy filling the blanks.”

Deangela’s curiosity was piqued in spite of her reluctance to deal with the death of her father. The two things he’d encouraged most in her were learning-by-doing and a concupiscent curiosity. Those black channels through the text were catnip.

“Is there a list in here of all the people?”

“Gray file. Members of the team . . . ‘detachment’ they call it—”

“I know.”

“Course y’do. And the chain of command’s in there, too. I’ve been on this for two and a half years. I’ve got lines on each of these guys, some better than others. I work slowly these days. I take medicine.” She patted her own hip.

“Connie. That okay?” Connie made a little hoot and waved the question away. “I’m trying to figure this out. Tell me where I’ve got this by the head or the tail.”

“Okay.”

“July fourteenth. There’s this mission from Camp Virtue.” Connie nods. “The mission is my dad’s team. Detachment. He and Gene Pollard are both killed in action, or so they say. On the same day, a contractor . . . two contractors . . . American?” She held up two fingers.

“Mm-hmm.”

“Two American contractors are killed in this vile brothel.” Four fingers now. “Your colleague’s blown up outside your hotel.” Five fingers. “Eight years later, you’re assisting Gene’s mom with a FOIA investigation.”

“You’re quick. There’s another piece to it. Maybe.”

“Okay?”

“Two days before all this, two nights really, Gaston comes in from a little field trip. Very agitated. And he makes one, maybe two trips to Camp Virtue, I can only assume, to speak with their press liaison. Public Affairs Officer. Major Will Carroll. Charming man and verrry pretty. Will. Light-skinned like you. Perfect for the job. Smooth as butter. Gaston’s on the outs with the rest of us. Basically, he’s convinced that PAOs are liars. Probably true, in retrospect, but we’re defending the flag. Bunch of us Americans. I’m perpetually drunk and somewhat more tolerant of Gaston than the rest of them, and he makes this oddly celebratory remark to me as we pass. He said, and I’m vividly sure of this, ‘I have just met Abeer Qassim, and I’m going to bury her killers.’ So, after getting the spellings wrong about twenty times, I google Abeer Qassim. In 2006, she was raped and killed at the age of fourteen by five American soldiers in Mahmudiyah, Iraq. I’m thinking, like, what the fuck? What does a four-year-old crime in Iraq have to do with Afghanistan and Camp Virtue?”

“Wait, you spoke to the French guy, Gaston, on the twelfth?”

“Yeah.”

“Two days before he was killed?”

She nodded.

“I don’t know . . . I mean . . . is he saying that he knows something about someone there who was involved with Mahmudiyah? Or is he saying that he knows about something like Mahmudiyah?”

“See, that’s where I’m unsure. But you see it, right? Not the logic, but too many similar [air quotes] themes, if that makes sense. Young girls. Contractors. Those guys were notorious criminals. Sex trafficked all over the Balkans after the DOD started hiring them. Then Gaston’s suggestion of some link between them and Abeer Qassim, I don’t know. But when you tell me you’ve been hired by this mysterious client, the rest of this gets pretty intriguing. And scary. DOD’s funny about their secrets. As we just rediscovered.”

“Yep. Look, you need to save your files, wipe your computer, and get a second phone. Yours is tapped. When you re-load the computer, use a good VPN and route everything again through a Tor browser.” Deangela wrote on a scrap of paper. “Buy one of these. It’s what I used to find the bugs. I’ll leave you cash right now. It’s an expense. For our security and yours.”

They sat for a while, processing.

“You ever meet my dad? I mean, I know you said you all went through the public relations guy, but I just wondered.”

“Actually, I think I may have. Was he white? Sorry.”

“No, no, it’s okay. Yes, yes, yes, he was white, not a big guy like some of them.”

“Did he have really striking blue eyes?”

Deangela swallowed hard. “Something not quite blue,” she said, hoarse. “Like aquamarine.”

“I saw him. He was hard to miss. He crashed a press conference to get coffee. Wearing field gear. The PAO chewed him out afterwards. I passed right by them. He was quite nice looking in a battered kind of way.”

She reached over to the table and snatched tissues, handing one of them to Deangela. Deangela was laughing through the tears about him. Crashing some conference for coffee. She felt a sudden and powerful affection for Connie Mason.

“What day was that?”

“Ummm, the eleventh or twelfth? He was telling Major Carroll, in fact, that he was new there.”

Deanglea blew her nose, wiped her face, took a sip of water. Another moment of silence.

“Who’ve you actually spoken to?” Deangela asked, looking up at Connie.

“Heather, of course. I emailed and called the members of the team. Those I could find. Sisson, Falhauber, Pibbles, Milano. Falhauber’s a contractor now. Dunny, the captain, he’s FBI. They all have the same story. ‘I am not at liberty blah blah.’ Pownall. Cuellar. Fermin, but he’s out somewhere in Michigan. Correa’s a cop now in a place called Skegum, also Michigan.” She knitted her brows. “Fermin was interesting. Sounded like he wanted to talk, but he still held the line. Hillman retired this year in Georgia. He called me all kinds of bitches and cunts when I called, then hung up.”

“These are team members?”

“All of them. Their statements are in the file. Read one, you’ve read them all. The coordination of the statements was pretty fucking artless. Insults the intelligence of anyone who reads them. I mean, it actually looks as if they had to edit in synonyms and shuffle paragraphs and insert misspellings to prevent the statements being duplicates.”

“What do they say?”

“Oh,” she sighed and rolled her eyes. “Team conducts mission to kill Jahangiri, Taliban chief. Team encounters Jahangiri and a group of Taliban in Charikar. Numbers flexible. One guy says twenty. Another [air quotes] about fifteen. Others, up to thirty. There’s a firefight. Your dad and Pollard are shot, as well as two civilians living nearby. They all claim that the whole Taliban squad or whatever was killed or fled. Jahangiri’s killed.” Connie shook her head and looked off to the side then back. “It was thin. Obvious bullshit. The mission was real. I went to the press conference. They’ve got a big photograph of Jahangiri’s corpse. Close-up of the dead face.” Her lips curled. “Like a hunting trophy. But something else happened out there. Gaston was right. This was sanitized horse shit.”

Indeed.

PART THREE

There are years that ask questions and years that answer.

—Zora Neale Hurston

26

Manassas, Virginia
October 7, 2021

Felix answered his door. Let Deangela in. She had a plastic shopping bag. Pulled out two new burners.

“Throw out the old one. Milo’s gonna get Mama one, and tell me the number after I route a message through Cedar. Gave mine to a homeless guy. We set ’em up on my computer. It’s encoded and rerouted.”

“What happened?”

“They’re up on Connie Mason. Once they had my phone, they had ’em all.”

“Good catch,” he said, turning off his burner. “They’ll know where we are then.”

“Who’s they?”

“Best guess? Guy named Farrell. Defense spook. Hatchet man. He transferred from the armed forces to the barely-legals when Trump took office. Not a nice fella.”

“You know this, how? No, never mind. I know. You can’t say.” She looked directly in his face. “Are we in danger? Honest answer.”

“Might be, yeah. Legal gloves came offa everyone with Trump. But the next guy never surrenders the power enhanced by his predecessors. Parties irrespective. Nature of the beast. You want out.”

“No, I wanna make a detour when we hit Michigan.”

“Detour?”

“Before we get up on Correa, we need to interview a guy in Tecumseh, Michigan. It’s like fifteen miles away.”

“Hector Fermin?”

“How’d you know?” Felix pointed at his own temple in reply. “Whatever, yeah, I wanna talk with Fermin. Connie Mason thinks he wants to talk. Approach him about Correa specifically, no reference to this mission thing. Just ask him about Correa. As a person.”

“You, not we. That’s something you’ll have to do yourself.”

“Why?”

“Just trust me. You’re the right person for this.”

“Does Correa have some pivotal role in all this shit Connie’s looking into?”

“Dunno. I know he’s wrong.”

“Yeah, you keep saying that. You’re putting me close to a lot of wrong.”

“I am. It’s true.”

“You knew I’d want to pick up the trail on my father, didn’t you?”

‘Not surprising, but my interest is in Correa.”

“Still, I’m feeling a little manipulated here.”

“Look, I told you at the outset that Correa was associated with your dad. I’ve withheld things that could put both of us in legal jeopardy. But I’ve not been dishonest. Or manipulative.”

“Fair play. Sorry. I’m off today.”

“I get it. It’s your dad.”

“And a touch of amenorrhea, TMI.”

“What now, you think?”

“I think we need to get out of here before this Farrell’s people show up. I think we need to go to Michigan.”

Felix turned a moment too late to hide his eyes. They filled with tears, his face all atwitch, right hand shaking as he tucked in under his left arm.

“Jesus, what’s the matter?”

“It’s nothing,” he said wiping at his face. “We need to go.”

*

“Hello,” Cedar answered. “Who’s calling?” She didn’t recognize the number.

“It’s me. Deangela.”

“What’s goin’ on?”

“How’s Isis?”

“She’s fine, what’s up?”

“Had to get another burner. Look, I need you to get over to Mama and Milo. Tell Milo to get a new burner and call this one. Set it up on a computer at a library or internet café or something. Tell Mama Milo’s gonna get her a burner. Get yourself one, too, and put in this number. No one else but me, okay? We’ll pay you back. Everything face-to-face, you guys. And outdoors. Then she can call me on this number. Everything okay back there?”

“Everyone’s worried. Your mom. Milo. Me. This covert ops shit, De. Like, what the fuck! And Farah’s on the verge of throwin’ your cousin out.”

“What’s with Tip? High again?”

“Farah thinks so. Meth. Lame stories about where she’s been. In the bathroom for an hour at a time, then hides in her room for two more. Pupils like saucers. Lookin’ around like a mouse in a room full of cats. Farah’s afraid she’ll start stealing.”

“Oh, she will. Look, we gotta run. Just get over to Mama, check in with Milo, and tell ’em the new number face-to-face.”

“Got it.”

“Love you.”

“Love ya back. Be fuckin’ careful, woman!”

27

I-70 & The Pennsylvania Turnpike
October 7, 2021

“This is a clusterfuck.”

Deangela was bloated, cramping, and tired. It was past eight at night. Something had happened on the Turnpike entrance near Breezewood, and traffic was snarled in the middle of a multi-lane cloverleaf so cacophonously over-commercialized it was almost iconic. They’d pulled both rentals—Felix’s white Blazer and Deangela’s silver Santa Fe—into a McDonalds to wait it out. Felix hovered over a half-eaten chicken-and-bacon with a chocolate milkshake. Deangela picked through a large order of fries and washed it down with root beer.

“You research me?” Felix asked, shaking a pill from a little bottle.

“What?”

“You backgrounded me, right?” He popped the pill and washed it down with a noisy bit of milkshake. “Allergy meds.”

“Tried. You’re kind of a ghost.”

“Name change,” he smiled. “Changed my surname to Sharpe. It was Dole. Felix Dole. Sharpe, Dole, get it?”

“Ha ha.” She smiled a bit in spite of herself. “Why?”

“To be a ghost,” he answered, eyes down, smile fading. “But here’s where we run into that information firewall again. Keep you and me out of prison. Need to know, and all that.”

“So, these people on our ass wanna put you in prison? Can I ask that?”

“Not exactly. They’re a little more earnest than that. What holds ’em back right now is thy don’t know if I’ve got . . . contingency plans.”

“Shit. Farrell.”

“Farrell. And whoever’s workin’ for ’im. I knew Farrell when he was twenty-seven-years-old. Love child of Joseph Mengele and Aileen Wuornos. Now he has an off-the-books task force with the budget of a small country.” Felix shook his head, then looked dead into her eyes.

“So that didn’t change after the election either? I mean, Obama closed the torture down after Bush, right?”

“Yeah, but then he kills four thousand people with drone strikes. Politicians, and I make very few exceptions, are sociopaths with cosmic egos. They confuse bein’ sly with bein’ smart. They fight for control of somethin’ that’s already too big for their little brains.” His voice dripped with bile. “Like putting the slow kid in charge of a three-ring circus. The circus goes on, because the clowns and elephants already know what to do. ’Til somethin’ goes wrong. When shit does go wrong, politicians respond wrong. Epigenetic stupidity I call it. They aren’t wired to run things. They’re wired for backrooms and ruthless little games.” He saw that look on her face. “Think.” he said. “Federal government has three million employees. Hundreds of agencies and offices. Each a self-contained bureaucracy. Each with its own petty clerk and his or her petty fixations. The guys in charge? They can’t tell you how many countries are in Africa or who’s the president of Guyana or how to poach a fuckin’ egg. Farrell’s outfit’s hidden all the way down in that mess, just one nasty little insect in a boiling hive of insects.”

“Vivid. Okay, I get it.”

“Sorry. I got issues.”

“A French philosopher said systems don’t run based on their stated ends. They’re self-perpetuating technical webs. Ends in themselves. They just run. We’re incorporated into it by a religion called efficiency, but, as you say, the circus runs itself for itself.”

“You’re a little scary,” he replied.

“Yeah, look who’s talking.”

“Let’s get scared somewhere else. Looks like it might be clearing off out there. What say we push as far as Somerset tonight.”

*

Durham, North Carolina

The hookup’s name was Darrell. Eight-balls of crank for fifty bucks.

Standard meetup. Semi-chichi grocery store called Super Compare. Darrell was a white guy. Tall, skinny, dark-haired. Khaki trousers and a long-sleeved white shirt. Neat and clean-shaven. Black wayframe glasses. He pulled down a can of soup, examined it, then put it back. She retrieved the eight-ball from behind the soup and put her money in. He went back and got the money. Always buy something before you leave. Darrell’s rules. Never speak to me. Dude was careful.

She checked out with a bag of Doritos, a six-pack of Miller Lite, and a pack of Marlboros. Tip was pretty. All her teeth still. And those blue-green eyes. She’d made a hundred dollars ninety minutes earlier. Blowjob. Businessman in his Chrysler 300. She had fourteen dollars left now for an Uber. She was calling when the two guys closed in, grabbed her by both arms, flashed some kind of badges, and hustled her into the back of a gray Suburban, her bag of goods and phone crashing on the pavement. She trid to scream, but the fatter shorter one clapped a hand over her mouth so hard she felt a tooth cut her lip. They did a hard turn through the parking lot.

“Hiya, Tiphane.” The heavyset bald dude with a mustache sat next to her in the back. The diesel-dude with the gelled blond hair was behind the wheel and leaving the lot. “I’m Harry, that’s Arthur, and you, my dear, are in extremely deep shit.”

She screamed as Harry suddenly grabbed her hard by the crotch with one hand then choked off the scream with the other across her neck. He held her like this, struggling to breathe.

“Bad habit you got there, baby girl.” Releasing her crotch, he dug in her jeans and held up the baggie with the eight-ball. “You won’t scream?”

Eyes wide and wet, she shook her head.

“Good.” He released her throat. “Goddamn, there’s cum on your breath, ya fuckin’ whore. You need to listen to me, okay.”

He gave her back the eight-ball.

“We don’t give a fuck. We’re not cops. But Arthur up there, Arthur’s . . . well, he’s a pervert, sweetheart. He likes to fuck women in the ass, then when he hits his stroke, he pushes an icepick right in behind the base of a girl’s skull. She does a dying quiver like a fuckin’ fish, and Arthur comes like a freight train. I hate it, cuz I gotta help this perverted motherfucker clean up the mess. Arthur, you fuck me up, buddy. Arthur likes your ass, you cheap fuckin’ whore, but I don’t want to clean up Arthur’s mess, so I got a deal for you. You gimme some information, I hold Arthur off and we take you back to the nigger bitch’s comfy little house. You can hit that meth and forget all about us. That a deal?”

Choking on tears and snot, she nodded almost imperceptibly.

“Good. Here’s what we need to know. Your cousin’s runnin’ with a guy that came by a couple days ago. White, middle-aged, big beard. Know who that is?”

“Name’s Felix somethin’.” Her voice trembled. “DeDe’s client. She’s a private detective. I heard ’em talkin’.”

“They say what he hired her for?”

“I don’t know,” she cried.

“Arthur, let’s head out to that landfill in the county.”

“No.” she screamed. “They said somethin’ about watchin’ a cop in Michigan, That’s all. I swear, I don’t know nothin’ else.”

Arthur looked in the mirror. Harry looked back.

“Arthur, let’s take Tiphane back to her Aunt Farah’s. Tiphane, listen, sweetie. You never saw us. Not a word. To anyone. Ever. Else Arthur’ll come back to claim your little poop chute. We’ll know. Understand?”

She nodded and sobbed.

*

Farrrell: “Whaddaya got me?”

Haldane: “We lost the electronics, but we know where they’re headed.”

Farrell: “Don’t keep me in suspense, boys.”

Haldane: “They’re doin’ somethin’ with Correa.”

Farrell: “The comms guy? The fuckin’ cop?”

Haldane: “Correct. In that farm-fuck town in Southeast Michigan. Skegum. Sounds like a body fluid.”

Farrell: “You know this how?”

Haldane: (Laughs) “Arthur and I ran the psycho-buttfuck routine on her cousin, the meth head.”

Farrell: (Laughs) “You guys need new material. What’s the plan?”

Haldane: “Go there. Put obs on the cop ’til we pick up Dole and Dale, ha! Dole, Sharpe, whatever the motherfucker goes by now.”

Farrell: “Best get goin’, then. I’ll book y’all a spook flight outa Raleigh and rent a car for ya. Detroit?”

Haldane: “Prob’ly the quickest.”

Farrell: “Call me tomorrow. I’ll have the cop’s details.”

28

Skegum, Michigan
October 8, 2021

Skegum had around 18,000 souls and a lot of maple trees. Fall colors were taking off. Lawns and lots and street gutters were marbled with red, yellow, green, brown, and tequila sunrise. Just the beginning, with peak color three weeks away. Houses and stores were already decorating for Halloween. Corn sheafs and pumpkins. Skulls and headstones. Great spiders perched on fabric webs. Effigies of movie monsters. Scarecrows with Scream masks. Plastic jack-o-lanterns.

Correa’s last four-ten rotation before switching to permanent days. Beginning after this shift. Weekend off, and goddamn was he ready for it. He pitched half a cup of stale coffee out the cruiser window. Looked around the gravel parking lot above Riverbank Baseball Field where he sat in the pre-dawn twilight finishing reports. Threw the cup out on the ground, too. Kept his ride clean. The Interceptor’s dash clock read 6:50 a.m. He cranked the engine and pulled out, mike in hand.

“Adam-one, Victor three three, ten forty-two.”

“Victor three three, Adam-one, roger.”

*

He unbuckled his duty rig as soon as he closed the door. Dropped it on the sofa. Stripped off his shirt. Released the Velcro straps on his vest. Fished out the night’s take, $2,483 between the sleeve and the Kevlar panel.

His safe was recessed into a cavity at the back of the bedroom closet. He added the take to the ledger. Total now: $48,562. Accounts in five national banks, one private bank, two credit unions, and a bitcoin wallet. He’d do a few minor account transfers later and take forty grand to Ralph.

He slept for seven hours. Shaved for the second time that day and showered. Changed into starched jeans and a gray Doublju flannel dress shirt that clung to his physique. Spritz of Gucci Gloaming Night cologne. Finger of Suavecito pomade stroked through his hair.

He drove a window-tinted, black Ram 1500. When he turned the first corner heading out from his place, an old man was climbing into the driver’s seat of a white Honda Accord in front of Yates Flower and Garden Center on Raisin Street.

*

The Larkton Lodge m/hotel backed into a large wooded lot at the western limit of Skegum. Correa spotted the red Volvo XC60 backed in to conceal the plates. Still running. Gildy Theiner, State Senator, forty-one years old. Blonde (with a bit of assistance). Photogenic. Pleasingly plump. Her husband was the richest farmer in Fox County. Gildy was the ex-Director of a dozen “charities” sponsored by the state’s billionaire Deline dynasty. Room 118, reserved by Correa. She gave him a lewd smile as she lowered the driver’s window.

They’d met at a Support the Police function last year. Deline-sponsored agitprop ahad of the introduction of legislation the following day for police reform.

Correa: snappy dresser, bilingual, and the former Special Forces communications specialist had just single-handedly revamped the force’s entire communications system. The Grand Rapids function was a reward. Gildy had zeroed in on him like a heat-seeking missile, fucking him in his truck in the Deline Center parking lot before they both headed back to Skegum.

To Correa’s merriment, Gildy was the local darling of the evangelical right, led by Flora Deline—the Michigan door-to-door sales dynasty’s billionaire matriarch. During their liaisons, Gildy fucked like a monkey while her husband was home doing the farm books and bossing Salvadoran poultry workers.

“I got you something,” she said. Leaned over from the bed to rummage through her purse, breasts shifting from right to left. She pulled out a seven-inch black cylinder and handed it to him.

“What is it?” he asked, holding it up to study the embossed label: Minipresso.

“It’s a portable expresso maker. See here,” she took it, “the cup screws off the end.”

“Where’s it plug in?”

“You don’t plug it. You just add boiling water. See, right here.”

“So, I have to have grind coffee and boil water in the cruiser if I want an espresso.”

She laughed. “You can pull over wherever they have hot water.”

“Okay.”

She set it on the nightstand. “Richard’s out of town next week. We could get a room over in Washtenaw maybe. Spend the night? Have breakfast? I could wear a wig or something.”

“He never suspects?”

“He’s too busy to suspect.”

“You still fuck, you two?”

She looked at him, perplexed. “You care?”

“I just wonder. Like, do you fuck him the way you fuck me.”

“Ah, no. And yes, sometimes we still . . . but no, you and I are . . . fresh? Forbidden? And he’s fifty-three, so . . . well, you’re much prettier. And taller. Richard’s only five-ten. He’s fat, fatter than me, and strong, but not like you, with the muscles.” She grinned.

Correa slid on top of her. “You fuck anyone else? Besides him and me?”

29

Skegum, Michigan
October 9, 2021

Haldane and McInnery had flown in on a government Casa from Raleigh-Durham to Detroit last night, and grabbed a silver Chevy Express 15 van from Hertz. They checked into the Larkton Lodge in Skegum at just after midnight. They watched Avengers: Infinity War in McInnery’s room, retired to their separate beds, and slept past ten.

Late breakfast at a local Greek joint called City’s Edge. McInnery had an omelet with a big dish of fruit. Haldane had two chili dogs with fries and a thick slice of apple pie. Haldane wiped chili off his mustache after every bite.

“Shave that bacterial colony and you won’t have to do that.”

“Go fuck yourself. It’s my pussy electrification device.”

McInnery gazed out the window. A city maintenance truck threw a rooster tail of dirty water as it passed. “I detest surveillance in the rain. Makes me indolent.”

“It’s the low pressure. That’s why there’s more roadkill in the rain. The fuckin’ animals get slow and stupid. Like, ‘oh, what’s that thing with the lights,’ then . . .” He knifed his hand forward and blew raspberries to simulate the fatal instant.

They finished their food. Haldane waved for the check.

“Once we pick up the cop,” said McInnery, “Felix and Halfrica should be somewhere nearby.”

“Farrell needs to greenlight all three of ’em and send us home. Skegum’s a shithole.”

“He’s a policeman, Harry. Too big a signature. Not like the Mason woman.”

“You were in there a long time, Arthur.”

McInnery threw Haldane a sly smile. “Foreplay.”

*

2:33 p.m.

Milo sat in the Municipal Library reading The Skegum Sentinel. The State Department confirmed meetings with the Taliban. Biden had rejected Trump’s request to withhold records from January 6 Committee. A public park statue in Skegum had been defaced the night before last. A local man was sentenced to twenty years for manslaughter. There was a charity 5K run on Saturday. Clinton would play Dundee in girls’ soccer. The Irish Hills Chamber of Commerce had scheduled a golf tournament.

At the next table over was a heavy-set black woman wrapped in dingy layers. Homeless. Bundle of salt and pepper hair tilting off her head as she nodded. The librarians all still wore masks. A leathery man with a backpack and a wet wool coat—homeless, too—walked past the front window with a miserable little dog on a tattered leash, both soaked by the steady rain. The pigeons under the awning shifted grudgingly to let the man and dog pass. Milo was “homeless,” too, dressed for the part.

He folded the paper neatly, replaced it on the display table, and put on a feeble walk to the restroom. Debility as a ruse didn’t attract attention. It compelled people to look away.

He texted Deangela: In Skegum, waiting . . .

*

Deangela checked along the edges of the mattress for signs of bedbugs. The Marchnote Motel was quite possibly the scabbiest she’d ever used. Felix knocked.

“Four stars or five?” he smiled.

“Funny,” she replied. “I’m gonna buy a blanket. Not sleepin’ on that bed without at least two layers between me and whatever substances might’ve impregnated that mattress.”

Her burner vibrated. Text.

“It’s Milo.”

“What’s up?”

“Hold on . . . shit!”

“What?”

“He’s in Skegum.”

“What? Why?”

She passed him the burner. Latest, farah good, isis n cedar good, im at city library, tip went back to arkansas, bored n u need me, dtp 4 contact

“What’s dtp?” he asked.

“Date time place. How far are we?”

“Half hour maybe.”

“Let’s get him,” she said, texting, Stay put. 45 m. U follow me. Bandana, shoe-tie

*

Skegum, Michigan
3:50 p.m.

The rain had depreciated into more of a soggy mist.

She walked past the library in a blue-gray rain jacket with a red paisley bandana on her head. No bandana would have been Milo’s signal to abort. He scooted his chair in, donned a frayed denim jacket, went out the door, and fell in behind her. She headed west on Raisin Street, the principle east-west thoroughfare through downtown. Three-quarters of a block up, she knelt to tie her shoe next to a white Blazer with the engine running, then went on. Milo opened the Blazer door and got in. He and Felix waited. The silver Santa Fe ahead pulled away from in front of the Two Rivers Coffee Shop. Milo and Felix followed.

*

McInnery was being a bitch about sitting on Correa’s place, a nice condo on a short cul-de-sac. It seemed as if Correa hadn’t been home last night—no vehicle—and they’d been there for more than four hours.

“I need to pee again,” McInnery grumbled. “If he’s on the day shift, he won’t be home until at least five. If that.”

“First of all,” said Haldane, “it’s fuckin’ Saturday. He might be layin’ up with some pussy. We don’t see ’im here, we’ll hear somethin’ on the scanner. Go on and piss.”

McInnery popped the door, walked over and urinated on a homeowner’s Winter Gem boxwood.

30

Marchnote Motel
October 8, 2021

Milo was two doors down from Felix. Milo and Deangela sat on the bed. Felix perched on the edge of a wobbly wishbone chair made from some material that didn’t occur in nature.

“I need my shots to stay here?” Milo grumbled.

“You don’t need to be here,” Deangela said. “I appreciate it, but you don’t have to do this.”

Felix looked back and forth like a spectator at a tennis match.

“Horse shit, no offense. I’ve been in that town since yesterday. It’s eighty percent white, fifteen percent Hispanic. Less than five percent black. You’ll stick out like a diamond in a goat’s ass.”

“Got Felix.”

“Yeah, a man with half an ear, slender in a county where eighty percent of adults are overweight.”

“As opposed to an octogenarian.”

“Old people are invisible. No one wants to notice us. We remind ’em they’re gonna die. And three’s better than two.”

“Okay.” She put her hands up. “What’s a good contact strategy?”

“What you’re already thinking. Long surveillance somewhere he’s bound to be. Like work. Monitor a scanner. How long’s he been on the force?”

“More’n eight years,” Felix answered.

“Keep one of us on his place,” suggested Milo, “another on the motor pool, one of us floating. Pick him up, put on a front-and-rear leapfrog. You disabled your dome lights?”

“Not yet,” Deangela answered. “We will.”

“Recorders?”

“In my trunk. Only got two.”

“Get one for Mr. Sharpe.”

“Felix, please.”

“Voice activated, hands free, Felix. Make a note of everywhere he stops and everyone he sees. Ever done surveillance?” Felix hesitated. “Yes or no.”

“Yes.”

Deangela snapped a look at Felix.

“Care to elaborate?” Milo asked.

“No.”

“Fair enough,” Milo responded. “So, you know you need a cover.”

“And a cover within a cover,” said Felix.

“Dedes? What’s yours? . . . Deangela, hello. What’s your cover?”

Deangela unfixed her gaze from Felix and looked back at Milo.

“Who’s gonna carry the scanner? It’s in my luggage.”

“Then you carry it,” replied Milo. “So, your cover?”

“Wildlife photography. Even brought my portfolio.”

“You’re a badass. Felix?”

“Retiring. Looking for a cheap place to relocate.”

“Okay, Felix, you just said ‘cover within a cover.’ Tells me your experience isn’t domestic. You were with intelligence or the military . . . or both. Say no more.”

Deangela stared at Felix again.

“Does Milo go on the payroll?” asked Deangela.

“Course,” said Felix.

“Start Monday morning,” said Deangela. “I gotta doorstep someone tomorrow in Tecumseh.”

“Another thing,” said Milo. “Tracked our guy yesterday afternoon right after I arrived.”

“Yeah?” said Deangela.

“He’s doing stud service for the local State Senator. Gildy Theiner. Rich girl. Up-and-comer, well-connected. And married. Watched ’em go into a hotel.” Deangela looked at Milo. “And remember,” he added, smiling, “You wanna make God laugh, tell him your plans.”

“Great,” said Felix. “Nice. Thanks.”

31

Tecumseh, Michigan
October 9, 2021

Small white-brick ranch on Blanchard Street. Well-kept. Yard lamp. One car garage. A rank of healthy, trimmed viburnums under the bay window. Block-edged asphalt driveway in good repair. Postage stamp lawn, mowed and edged.

She checked her watch: 2:27. Opened her laptop. Search: “Fermin Unbuilding.” Enter.

Don’t demolish that home or building. Deconstruct it. It’s a greener alternative, and you get the tax break. Fermin Unbuilding salvages buildings by hand and donates all materials to charity, which YOU can write off with the IRS.

What is deconstruction? Deconstruction is the hand demolition of buildings in the reverse order of their construction (unbuilding). All materials are carefully removed for reuse and recycling. We reduce the disposal of materials into the landfill, and provide materials for three local Habitat for Humanity Restores to sell.

Developers and construction companies see buildings located on property slated for development as a costly, unavoidable annoyance. Not us. We see it as a win-win-win opportunity for you, for us, and for the environment. We work as far as Addison, Dundee, Manchester, and Blissfield. Call Hector Fermin to arrange an estimate. 517-UNBUILD (862-8453) or email ferminunbuilding@gmail.com.

Sounded pretty cool, actually. Business hours: Monday through Friday, 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Today was Saturday. She called the number anyway. Message restating working hours. She’d give it until five, then try again tomorrow. To kill time, she typed in “connie mason children’s kingdom.” Enter.

Former war correspondent murdered during break-in

Deangela’s skin rippled.

Connie Wren Mason, 43-year-old journalist who’d written for the New York Times, Washington Post, and Washington Times, was found dead by police in her Gainesville apartment on Wednesday, after a neighbor called about her dog crying. Police say she was beaten and strangled, and they haven’t ruled out sexual assault.

Deangela stopped reading. Texted Felix and Milo. See the news, gainesville va, connie mason, killed wednesday

Send.

Felix called.

“What the hell!” she said before he could speak.

“Christ!” He was crying. Again.

“Is it this important?”

“Oh, Jesus!”

“I’ve got all these files, Felix. What now?”

“I can’t—”

“They killed her, Felix!”

Fifteen minutes later, after a cool down, she rang Farah’s burner.

“Sweetbread.”

“Hi, Mama.”

“Where you at?”

“Michigan, Mama. For another week, at least. What news from Durham?”

“Quiet here. Freddy’s in Georgia visitin’ family. Tip left.”

“What I hear. She give a reason? She goin’ back to the shitty man in Arkansas?”

“They all shitty men. She don’t tell me anything. Come in yesterday afternoon. Look like she seen a ghost. Pack her things, and ask me to take her to Durham Station. I give her $300. She buy a ticket to Hot Springs.”

“She jonesin’?”

“Probably.”

A dusty white 2017 Ford utility truck with tool lockers and an overhead ladder rack pulled into Fermin’s driveway. “Fermin Unbuilding—Green Building Demolition with Tax Credits” written along the sides with contact information. The garage door rolled up. The truck pulled in. Out stepped a short man, stout, sweat-stained, neat taper-cut black hair. Work boots, threadbare khaki work pants, and company t-shirt covered in dust. He stamped dust off his feet at the side door. Hit a button. The garage door descended again. Working on a Saturday?

“Mama, someone I need to talk to just got here. I need to go.”

“Love ya, Pick.”

“Love ya back.”

The car lock beeped. Approaching the door, her pulse thumped. The scent of wood smoke drifted past. A house finch chirped. The hum of faraway traffic was threaded by a distant siren. She pushed the doorbell. It chimed inside.

The face at the door was sun-and-wind weathered, as caramel brown as Deangela’s, though more olive than her red. Five-foot-six she estimated. Eyes large. Long full lashes. Expression between curiosity and suspicion. He held the storm door open enough to make eye contact. Not enough to invite her in.

“Hello?”

“Hi,” she said nervously. “My name’s Deangela Dale. I’m an investigator. May I come in?”

“What kind of investigator?”

“Contract. Independent.”

“You investigate contracts?”

“No, I work on contract independent of law enforcement. We investigate lots of things.”

“Like what?” He smirked.

“Legal assistance, bail skips, missing persons, debt tracing, marital infidelity, background checks, insurance claims, employee theft . . . stuff like that.”

“What’re you investigating me for?”

“I’m not, Mr. Fermin.” She’d said it correctly. Most Anglos made his surname rhyme with vermin. “I’m investigating something else, but you may have relevant information.” His smirk turned to suspicion. “I think you may have met my father.” She immediately regretted how abrupt and tactless that sounded.

“I’m sorry, but are you sure you have the right Fermin?”

“Yes, sir.”

“So, who’s your father.”

“I think you were in the Army with him.”

“Sorry, your name again?”

“Deangela Dale.” He frowned in response, then a look of recognition.

“Was he white? No, sorry—”

“Yes, it’s okay. Yeah, he was white?”

“Died in Afghanistan?”

“He did, yeah.”

“Come in.”

The front door opened onto a small, spotless living room. Parquet floor and apricot walls. Antique mahogany and leather sofa, matching love seat, coffee table set on an intricate Afghan rug. He had skills and, she conjectured, and serendipitous access to all manner of hidden treasures on his job. Tasteful, even artistic, in application. Two framed Andrew Wyeth prints—interesting choice. Cherry-finish secretary on one wall for a laptop. Bookcase, almost ceiling high, six level, with an impressive library on construction trades, crafts, landscaping, and gardening, as well as fiction that ranged from One Hundred Years of Solitude (damn!) to Cormac McCarthy, from Nadine Gordimer to basically everything written by Graham Green. Crime stuff by Gillian Flynn and Tana French. Flannery O’Connor (he liked women who played in the dark) and Tolkien. Chesterton on Aquinas. Gregory’s Unintended Reformation. Ponting’s Green History of the World.

Cerebral proletarian. Okay.

He pointed her to the kitchen through an archway. White cabinets. Brushed nickel appliances. Four-seat dining set of white ladderback chairs and a white-legged table with a walnut top. He pulled a chair out for her.

“Been to a job site. Loose ends. Volunteers coming on Monday.”

“Ambitious man.”

“OCD more like. I don’t have much to offer. Orange juice, beer, or water.”

“Water’s fine, thanks.”

He pulled a Heineken and a bottle of Topo Chico out of the refrigerator. Twisted off the tops. He handed her the water and sat.

“What is it you want? If your dad’s who I think he is, I knew him for like three days. You know he was killed right after he arrived, right?” Caught himself. “Course you do, sorry.”

“S’okay. Yeah, I know all that. And the story about how, more or less. But this is . . . okay . . . I’m not . . . it’s a long story, but I’m not here about Daddy. I’ve been hired to look into one of your team mates from Afghanistan. Pedro Correa?”

His face dropped from curiously friendly to dead like a blown fuse. The shift wasn’t lost on her.

“I didn’t keep up with any of them,” he said. “Nothing to tell. Been, what, ten years?”

“Eleven, but I’m curious. What did you know about him then?”

“You’re welcome to finish your mineral water.” He stood. “I’m taking a shower. Lock up when you go.”

“Wait, please, I just—”

“How old were you when your dad went over?”

“Eighteen.”

“Then you know he was in Special Forces.”

“Of course.”

“And you know that those operations are classified.”

“Yes, yeah, but I don’t want to know about operations. At all. I want to know what you thought of Correa, as a person.”

He relaxed a bit.

“What’re you investigating him for?”

“Confidential.”

“See, we’re both all confidential.” His gaze hit the floor and bounced back up. “Sorry I acted like a dick.”

“Okay. Correa’s a policeman. My client suspects he’s corrupt. That enough?”

He sat back down.

“Where’s he a cop?”

“See, that’s the thing. He’s working fifteen miles from here, in Skegum.”

“What? Wait. What?”

“I thought you’d know. Maybe had contact with him.”

“Last person I’d contact.”

“Why?”

“You say corruption?”

“Yeah. Does that square with your recollection?”

“Cubes with it.”

“So people tell me. He may well be into something illegal.”

“Only may be?”

“Could he be corrupt? Or dangerous?”

“For real dangerous. Like Ted fucking Bundy dangerous. Sorry.”

“S’alright. What can you tell me? That’s not classified.”

“Back then? Mediocre commo guy. Head never in the game. Vain. Weight lifter. Light-skin Puerto Rican paranoid about getting too much sun. That Boricua light-skin thing. Used more sunscreen that the white boys,” he scoffed. “Sorry,” he caught himself.

“Mama’s Belizean. We know about the color thing. Go on.”

“Well, he was a porn junkie, oh my God. The creepier the better. He’d watch it right in front of people. No shame. Taste ran to anything that humiliated women. Masturbated in his cot at night. Openly.”

“That’s . . . disturbing. Anything else?”

“Long Island boy. Liked to front like a street Rican, but he’s raised in a big nice house, or so people say. His papi was successful in insurance, I think. Pedro was like . . . empty? Something missing in him. All you see is an act.”

“You say he’s dangerous, but he’s all show?”

“No, not what I meant. If it’s about what Pedro wants, then he’s a black hole, crushes everything that crosses his event horizon.”

“Wow, that’s . . . descriptive. He smart?”

“In a bad way, but yeah.”

They sat silently for a few moments.

“If it’s okay, I’d like to hear your impressions of my dad.”

He took a long draw on his beer and sighed. She drank some of the Topo.

“You gotta understand, your dad arrives, and we get the mission like in less than two days. The mission where, well, you know. The boys . . . the team . . . they’re all hyped up because we’re getting this Delta Force guy for a team daddy. Our detachment’s not language-trained for the region, so we’re farmed out to a big, shitty supply depot near Kabul. The team itself . . . well, it was jodido. Messed up.”

“Hablo español con fluidez. Sé lo que significa ‘jodido’.”

“Then you’re one up on me. My pocho Spanish is barely passable. I was born up the road there, in Manchester.”

“How was the detachment jodido?”

“We had a full complement of specialties. Unusual at the time. But we lacked discipline and cohesion. Team Captain was compromised from whorin’ with the boys. Team sergeant, before your dad? Total slug. Three people on that team, they’re not right in the head. Pedro’s one of ’em. I’m a church boy then, so I’m kinda ostracized. I was a medic. They called me Baby Doc. For junior medic, get it?” He smiled, not happily, at the memory.

“My dad was an SF medic once. What kind of church boy?”

“Oh, Catholic. Prayed the rosary. Confession once a week. Full gallop.”

“Not anymore?”

“I’ve become a rocky soil.”

“Matthew 13 and Luke 8.”

“Know your parables.”

“Trivia queen, me. So, my dad showed up?”

“Yeah, all clean from the States. His eyes I remember.”

“Aquamarine, yeah.”

“Tough-looking guy, but not big.”

“Five-eight.”

“So, the first day, he interviews all of us. I’m the last interview. The other guys, they say he’s off. But when I talk to him, he seems pretty damn lucid. I tell him I want off the team, maybe out of the Army, and he explains conscientious objector status like he’s readin’ it from a book. No judgement, just a recital.”

“Why’d you want out?”

“Okay, here’s where we talk about operations. Other stuff, too, but we were warned in no uncertain terms that everything downrange stays downrange.”

“Fair enough. My dad?”

“We got the mission right after that. Can’t discuss it, sorry.”

“Was Gene Pollard killed by fratricide?” She ambushed him with that one. His face shut down again. “Sorry, you can’t talk about it, right?”

“Are you working for Gene’s mother? She tried to contact me through some journalist.”

Connie Mason—Deangela’s stomach flipped.

“That’s one I can’t say. Or shouldn’t. But the answer’s no. She’s not my client. I do have a file. From that journalist investigating the possibility of fratricide on your mission.” No point in bringing up the death. “Don’t suppose I could ever talk you into looking over that file, could I?”

“No. It’s a standoff on that one.”

“Maybe it’s just a quandary.”

“Like a puzzle, right? I’m not puzzled. I can go to prison for talking about anything that happened there.”

“Afghanistan, or Camp Virtue?”

“Both probably, but especially Camp Virtue.”

“Ever heard of Mahmudiyah?”

“What’s that?”

“Place in Iraq. French reporter who attended briefings at Camp Virtue told someone he’d knew something about Mahmudiyah. Or like Mahmudiyah? Iraq, 2006. Fourteen-year-old girl gang-raped and murdered there by American troops. Killed her family, too.”

Even under his brown skin, he blanched.

“You need to finish your drink and go,” he said.

She got up. Chugged the bottle, supressed a belch, and set it on the table.

“Thanks for your time, Mr. Fermin.” She wrote in her notebook and tore off a page. “This is my number. To talk about anything.” She laid it on the table next to the empty bottle. “Please don’t share that.”

She got almost out the door, before he spoke. He stood in the hall by the kitchen.

“You watch out for Pedro Correa.” He looked at her more with sadness than alarm. “He’s hateful. He especially hates females. When I said Bundy, that wasn’t some, like, vague analogy. He’ll hurt you if he thinks it’s necessary. He’ll enjoy hurting you because you’re female.”

“I’ll keep that in mind.”

“I mean it.”

“So do I. Thanks, Mr. Fermin.”

“Doc. People still call me Doc.”

“Thanks, Doc.”

32

Dundee, Michigan
October 10, 2021

She’d slept on top of the bedclothes in until almost eight with a cheap blanket from Meijers.

News of Connie Mason, along with questions about her father in Monterrey had given her a restless night. She carried out her morning ablutions in slow motion. Everyone was on a day off. They’d agree to leave one another be until at least past lunch. Milo had collected everyone’s laundry last night and offered to take it that morning to a nearby laundromat. She really, really loved Milo.

By the time she finally stepped out in search of real coffee her head hurt. Outside, an icy fog huddled in the low ground. The sky looked like dirty cement. She’d put on a pair of faded Wranglers, gray running shoes, and her black hoodie. Her right eye was burning and red like she had an infection. Great.

She shoved her toothbrush in her kangaroo pocket. Drove to the commercial cluster around US-23 and M-50 with the giant Cabela’s store, with its massive statue of two grappling grizzlies in the parking lot. She had an egg and cheese at Subway with a large coffee. Brushed her teeth in a Speedway bathroom. Waited at the door of the nearby Urgent Care until they opened at nine. Just enough time to hit Walgreens for her antibiotic eye drops, then make ten o’clock Mass at St Irene.

Little parish. White clapboard instead of stone. The whiteness extended into the gleaming walls of the sanctuary. An antidote, perhaps, to the long gray winters. Or the gray wrapped around her heart. She surprised the other (white and Latino) parishioners, but she was greeted cheerfully at the door by the priest and a woman of around sixty. The priest was . . . thirty-five? Tiny thin man, shorter than her. Close cropped brown hair and a neat goatee.

Reluctant to call more attention to herself, she found a seat near the back. Sat in the middle of the pew, dabbing her infected eye with a tissue, until she had to shift for a Hispanic family. Grandma (next to Deangela), two parents, and four kids ranging from teen to toddler. Reminded her of Doc, who’d stayed on her mind, her thoughts chasing from him to Monterrey to Connie.

She inhaled her own despondency as the lector read off announcements and reminded parishioners to silence their electronic devices. She stared at her hands in her lap. The little wrinkles in her fingers, the short and not so well attended nails, the scars, the color change from backs to palms, the raised veins and bony prominences. The hollow actuality of her own hands left her abandoned. She was mortal. And lost. As insignificant as an insect.

Her leaden trance was broken when the music cued. The congregation rose for the Gathering. She stood, hands folded to her front, and picked up the hymn, “Our God is Here,” a hymn she knew well, even if her heart was unattuned now to its optimism. She sang quietly out of self-consciousness in this strange parish.

Her bleak prepossessions stalked her through the Mass, where she’d come in the hope of pushing them back. The safe house of transcendence she sought was disrupted by a series of glitches with the priest’s microphone. It was only as they lined up to take communion that something opened in her, and the tears broke through as the little priest looked into her infected eye and put the host in her hands.

“Body of Christ,” he said.

“Amen,” she responded, her voice cracking in a flood of anguish and disappointment.

She returned to her pew and knelt face down to conceal the tears. The grandmother next to her reached over and stroked her back. That opened the floodgates, and the old woman shifted and wrapped an arm around her. Deangela received the stranger’s commiseration. Gratefully. When communion was done, and everyone sat back in the pews, she took the old woman’s hand and kissed it. Then she went quietly to the end of the pew, genuflected, and left.

She was almost to the Santa Fe in the parking lot, when the old woman called to her. She’d followed Deangela out. Plump with an awkward gait. Face worn, folded, asymmetric. Her hair, pulled into a tight bun, was white as a swan.

“Are you okay?” she asked, in a way that told Deangela her English wasn’t fluent.

“O, Dios mío, gracias, sí, estará bien,” Deangela said.

“De dónde eres?” asked the woman, taken aback by Deangela’s Spanish.

“Ay, abuela, soy gabacha, pero mi mamá es centroamericana,” she replied. “He tenido una semana muy mala y estoy inmensamente agradecido por su amabilidad. Cómo se llama usted, señora?

“Felicia Amador, y tuyo?”

“Deangela Dale.” [She pronounced it day-AHNG-hail-ah.]

“Un nombre encantador. Qué es lo que te ha preocupado?

“Las señales a lo largo de mi camino están siendo destruidas.”

“No puedes volver atrás, mi amor, así que tienes que continuar en una dirección hasta que te encuentres de nuevo con tu camino. Aquellos que encuentres serán tus señales. Algunos te dirán que sí, otros te dirán que no. Al final todo saldrá bien.” The congregation was spilling into the parking lot. “Todo camino, por duro que sea, conduce a Dios. Dame un abrazo, querido. Tengo que volver con mi familia.”

Deangela embraced Felicia, who patted her cheek before turning to go.

She sat on the bed in her room with dead Connie’s documents and a cup of Speedway machine coffee.

She was grateful to Felcia for her empathy, but the restless melancholy persisted. Last day of her period, barely spotting, and by now the worst of her amenorrhea was past. Couldn’t blame that. Everywhere behind, dismay and regret. Everywhere forward, peril and mortality. Theodora’s final weeks of bedridden agony. Her father’s mythic death exposed as an official fraud (and he may have been a murderer when she’d last embraced him). Connie’s murder. And Doc telling her she’s investigating a misogynistic psychopath—one connected, albeit on the sly, to at least one powerful local political figure. She wanted a bowl, the sound of the lighter, the glow of burning bud, the catch of the smoke in her lungs, and the delicious fairyland simulation of well-being spreading through her mind and into her limbs.

Deep breath.

*

Inspector General review of “the mission.” Doc’s statement first, then the others. She read Connie Mason’s version, where the redaction blanks had been filled in with educated guesses. The similarities between the statements were almost embarrassing.

At around 0200, we left SFC Hillman and CW2 Pownall on the objective rally point. We initiated actions on the objective approximately 30 minutes later. As we approached the target building, we received intense fire from approximately twenty Taliban fighters. MSG Dale and SFC Pollard conducted a bold direct assault while the rest of the team maneuvered. We returned fire. SSG Cuellar and SSG Pibbles threw one fragmentation grenade and one WP grenade. The Taliban quit firing, and a few ran away. MSG Dale and SFC Pollard had been hit. Both were KIA. It was the bravest thing I ever saw. Two civilians were killed by the Taliban in the crossfire. We withdrew to the objective rally point and called for extraction. (Fermin)

At 0200, Hillman and Pownall stayed on the ORP. Actions on the objective started 30 minnits later. We received intinse fire from the target building from maybe two dozens Taliban fighters. Who killed two civiliens. We returned fire. Dale and Pollard were hit during a bold frontle assault and were KIA, but that let us manuver. Me and Pibbles threw a frag and a willy pete. The Taliban stopped firing and some of them ran off. We withdrew to the ORP and called for extraction. Dale and Pollard were extremly brave and died as heros. (Cuellar)

All of them read this way. Every single statement had the words “bold” in front of a “frontal assault,” Cuellar’s second-language misspellings (deliberate?) notwithstanding, the word “brave” in there somewhere, and all referenced a “target building,” “Taliban fighters,” and “maneuver.” This, apparently, gave no pause to the IG staff reviewing the statements, because the entire account was rubber-stamped as gospel.

In the appendices, the two autopsy reports.

Pollard: one entry wound, in the back of his neck, just below his skull, “between C1 and C2.” Recovered, 21-grain bullet fragment “consistent with a 5.56 NATO round.” She looked up 5.56 NATO ammunition. Full-brass-jacket bullet, 55 grains. So, bullet fragment. And not from any “frontal assault.” This was . . . she thought about it . . . a ricochet from behind? Round fired by a comrade. Hits something solid, metal or stone. Fragment angles improbably through his cervical spinal cord. Neurological decapitation. Instant death.

Her father: shot three times. Also 5.56×45mm NATO. She found 133 different weapons that used this ammunition. One shot entered his left inferior-anterior ribcage. Passed through on the opposite side, nearly level. Another shot, entering left, tore through his upper pelvis and lumbar spine. Another level shot, standing. Last shot. The most devastating. Directly in the face. Close range. Destroyed most of his head. Those bright aquamarine eyes.

She put the papers on the bed. Washed her face in the bathroom. Vomited.

33

Skegum, Michigan
October 10, 2021

The Fox County Board of Commissioners had nine members, one from each District. The Chairman of that Board was Ralph Fabiszac, age 57. His mother, Louise (Tibery) Bagley, was widowed with the death of Ralph’s father, Bruno Fabiszac, when Ralph was four. Louise remarried a year and a half later to Bruno’s colleague from their highly prosperous local insurance empire, Wayne Bagley. Wayne Bagley was for a time the Mayor of Skegum. Bruno’s mother, Ralph’s grandmother, Amanda, had been the local power-philanthropist, contributing vast sums of money for municipal parks and other civic improvement projects. Ralph’s half-brother, his junior by six years, was now the three-term Fox County Sheriff, Jason Bagley, age 51.

Amanda Bagley had also established the sprawling (and profitable) Skegum Christian Center. Private school, K through 12. Meeting facilities. Snack bar, gymnasium, pool, picnic area, fields for baseball and soccer. Even a veterinary practice. The Skegum Christian Center was one of almost a hundred such academies throughout the state, a network co-funded by the Deline dynasty, the same one that supported State Senator Gildy Theiner and a host of other politicians throughout the state, effectively exercising control, through a river of campaign donations (or denial thereof), over the state’s Republican political apparatus. The Deline organization was symbiotic with the Hamset Valley (mega) Church just outside Grand Rapids, connected to hundreds of smaller “evangelical” churches throughout Michigan that served as ideological transmission belts.

Ralph was educated in the Skegum Christian Center, where Ralph was a diligent student. He was trained there in reading, mathematics, civics, baseball, the prosperity Gospel, and Republican politics.

Junior year in high school, he began dating his wife-to-be, the equally ambitious Judith Cortenall. Ralph went on to earn his MBA, Judith her juris doctorate, and they were wedded soon after, on July 22, 1991, the same day Jeffery Dahmer was arrested in Milwaukee while watching a Star Wars movie with a decaying human head as his companion.

Ralph was a thick man from the front and thinner from the side, like he’d been given a going over with a rolling pin. His face was broad, flat, and pale. Eyes blue. A full head of hair—at 57, still more brown than gray—contrasted with the mustache he’d worn since graduating high school, which had turned snow white. As Ralph hit middle age, he’d put on the usual abdominal spread without becoming corpulent. Judith, attorney for their massive insurance business, had not aged as well, looking closer to a starved-skinny 70 than her actual 57.

Ralph liked the Detroit Tigers, rare coins, his perfectly preserved cherry-red 1957 Chevrolet Bel Air, Everybody Loves Raymond reruns, and performing 69 to climax with black escorts. Judith was unaware of the latter hobby, which he’d taken up after a party—where he’s had his first experience with it—in 2016 . . . and to which he’d become utterly addicted.

The organizer of that party was a Skegum police patrolman named “Pete” Correa.

In the Fall of 2015, Correa had taken over the local methamphetamine trade from a Detroit biker gang called the Freebooters. The Freebooters sent four members—Dennis Grange, Anton Fredricks, Phillip Jones, and Kellen Cosgrave—to intimidate Correa after he’d announced to a member he’d busted (Cosgrave) that they were out of the trade in Fox County. He didn’t give a shit about their rep or the rumors that they were connected with Sinaloa.

“Those fucking Mexicans can eat my shit,” were his exact words.

Correa agreed to meet the Freebooters for a parlay one night along a local twelve-mile bike trail between Skegum and Tecumseh. He’d arrived with a rented trailer and parked almost a mile away. Equipped with a Mini-14 carbine, he ambushed them from the thickets along the trail, dropping them all with the carbine and delivering the coup de grâce with a 34-inch blue-and-green Easton Typhoon baseball bat. Then he retrieved the trailer, loaded in the bodies and the bikes, along with the baseball bat, the rifle, a shovel, and two garbage bags full of bloody soil, and drove to Vines Lake in Jackson County.

It took over an hour and a half in the dark to coax the bikes, bodies lashed to them, across a twenty-yard lake shelf that dropped suddenly from five feet off into thirty-two feet of water. He multiply punctured each body with a K-bar knife as additional insurance against bloat-and-float. Changed clothes. Drove the trailer back into town. Turned it in the next day after a good wash.

The bodies had been discovered in the Spring of 2017 by a crappie fisherman named Dusty Lighthorse, whose Garmin Echomap convinced him he’d found a perfect brush pile. Instead, he reeled in a rotted cluster of human metacarpals on a Northland bucktail jig. The investigation hit a dead end early, and once the bodies were identified, few members of law enforcement gave a shit. References were made to self-cleaning ovens.

Patrolman Correa then became the shadow boss for the Fox County methamphetamine trade. One of his regular customers, who he’d picked up on a strategic bust one night, was Lester Dotson, twenty-one-year-old eldest son of Maynard Dotson, part-time day-trader and General Manager for the Fox Hills Country Club. In exchange for Lester’s release without charges, Maynard agreed to launder some of Correa’s drug profits for a ten percent fee. Maynard also agreed, after Correa had given it some thought, to use the country club—rented by an amorphous entity called Patrons of Progress—for a series of four parties to which were invited elite local men—only men. Billed as a masculine networking opportunity, attendees included local politicos and prosperous businessmen, law enforcement. Clergy was judiciously excluded.

Pedro Correa was never seen. He arranged, however, for the installation of hidden audiovisual surveillance throughout the country club, including several “special” rooms. Pretty women served drinks, both alcoholic and non-alcoholic with a covert helping of gamma-Hydroxybutyric acid, or GHB. Commonly found in miniscule quantities in meat, citrus fruit, and wines, larger doses of GHB have the effect of creating euphoric states, lowering inhibitions, and elevating libidos. Around hour-two of these parties, new guests—more pretty women—arrived, high-end escorts like the servers, in a variety of sizes, shapes, and colors, even including two young males. As things had taken their course, the cameras rolled in every room from multiple angles.

The costs for these shindigs were outrageous, dipping deeply into his newly acquired meth accounts; but the payoff, in terms of leverage and influence, returned handsomely on the investment.

This was where Ralph Fabiszac had discovered his new and ever more obsessive hobby. Party number two, for Ralph his first. Once unknowingly dosed with GHB, he was approached by “Gabby,” real name Shanaiya Franklin from Pontiac. Gabby dressed in a low-cut, floral gray-on-white capelet-sleeve cocktail dress. Ivory pumps and white nail polish that showcased her flawless dark skin. She took Ralph into one of the special rooms. It may as well have been his first hit of crack.

Correa had taken care of Ralph, after having shown him the videos (two from different angles) ever since. Correa’s first approach to Ralph was for the purpose of expanding his money-laundering operation through the insurance company—a business with which Correa had grown up. Correa was pleasantly surprised when, rather than being a reluctant accomplice, Ralph had readily agreed on the ten percent money-wash, but only on the condition that Correa continued to organize his now weekly assignations with African American escorts. There was nothing in Ralph’s life to which he looked forward more.

Ralph, as the Sheriff’s brother, was additional insurance (built-in pun). A hands-off policy with regard to the Fox County meth trade. Ralph rewarded his brother with half the laundering fees. Over the last few years now, the only meth operations busted by County were start-ups and freelancers.

Today was Sunday. Ralph and Judith just returned from church. Ralph’s cell vibrated. Day after tomorrow, you choose the time, add 40. Pete Correa wanted to meet in two days to pass along $40,000 for cleaning.

34

October 11, 2021
Southeast Michigan

Deangela, Milo, and Felix claimed a table at a Waffle House on the way to Skegum. Almost 6 a.m. when their plates arrived. Deangela checked her watch.

“We need to be in position before seven,” she said impatiently. A shortage of sleep, the news about Connie Mason, Doc Fermin’s warnings, and her document review had left her irritable.

“Eat up,” said Milo. “We’ll be there.”

Drawn into himself, Felix had said barely a word since she’d relayed the news about Connie the night before. He looked at his food like an illegible page.

“I sacrificed another human,” he finally said.

“You don’t know that,” Deanglea said defensively. “I saw that place. It’s a sketchy-ass area. Disabled woman, living alone, easy target.” Even as she spoke, she was replaying the word another in her mind. Another human being. Another, as in someone other than Connie? Or, another, as in more than one? “You wanna call it off?” She wished he would.

Felix picked at his plate.

“Eat,” he said, face grim. “Don’t know how long we’ll be stuck in the cars.”

Deangela kept her pedantic knowledge of the sunken-cost-fallacy to herself.

*

Weather forecast: partly cloudy, high in the low sixties. The sun hadn’t yet risen above downtown’s early twentieth century architecture, still enveloped in a thin haze.

Following Correa from home was pronounced too risky. Instead, they staked out the police motor pool gate. Felix parallel parked in front of the library, two doors from the City Police entrance. Across the street: big Methodist church, ballet center, and something called Heart-to-Heart Counselling with a posterboard rainbow flag in the window. Milo had rented a white Accord. (“Most common car, most common color.”) He parked two blocks East across from the Post Office and in front of a food pantry with a moldy, flaking mural. Cartoon Jesus passing loaves and fishes to kids who looked like space aliens. Deangela parked in front of the Turning Point Community Church within view of the police motor pool and one of the most complicated five-street intersections she’d ever seen. If they’d just built a roundabout. GPS displays open on their dashes. Phones on chargers, speaker mode.

Deangela took no notice of a silver Chevy van parked half a block northwest in front of Diana’s Salon.

*

“Was that him?” Haldane asked. The Interceptor pulled past the gate and headed south on Billings.

“Not sure,” replied McInnery. “Too much glare on the windshield. It was a man. Maybe.”

“Fuck . . . okay, follow it.

“What?”

“If it’s him, we don’t wanna miss it.”

“It may not be him.”

“Fuck, man, flip a fuckin’ coin. Follow the motherfucker, and listen to the scanner.”

McInnery pulled out, shaking his head.

*

Deangela held up a photograph from Felix’s file. The cruiser passed through the rolling gate. Hollywood stop before turning south.

“Marked Interceptor coming out,” she told them. “Don’t follow. Wrong guy.”

“Roger,” said Felix.

“Roger,” said Milo.

She set a half bottle of water in the cup holder. A silver van drove past. Checked her watch: 7:09 a.m.

7:12 a.m. Interceptor exited the gate. Photo check. Bingo.

“Heads up, guys. Rabbit headed north on Billings. I follow.”

“Roger,” responded Milo. “Parallel on your east, McCarty Street North.”

“Roger,” said Felix. “Felix, I’m on your six.”

Deangela stayed back one block, scanner on. She’d memorized (of course) the police ten-codes when she’d first started working with Milo. Most departments abandoned ten-codes for plain language, especially since the interagency snafus around Hurricane Katrina. This little department, for whatever reason, held out. Also memorized: automotive years, makes, and models. And she could snap off a personal description. Like the guy strolling across the street: “light-skin male, early twenties, glasses, braids, five-nine, one-fifty, red sweatshirt, blue jeans, and brown Tims.”

A scanner call. “Ten-ninety-one bravo” (noisy animal). M-54 North. She saw Correa’s silhouette reach for a mike.

“Victor three-three, ten-seventy-six.” En route. He took a left on Pacet Street.

“Rabbit left on Pacet, heading north on 54,” Deangela reported. “Felix, follow. I’ll stay straight on Billings. Milo, go left on Pacet. Pick up Felix’s six north on 54. Callsign, Victor-three-three.”

“Roger.”

“Roger.”

*

“Wrong fucking man,” McInnery recriminated. A chubby, sandy-haired cop stepped out of his cruiser to assist at a school crossing.

*

Correa responded to the noisy animal complaint, stopped at a 7-Eleven for a Monster drink, and set up a trap on Maple Street where the speed limit shifted down from 35 to 30. Two stops in less than an hour. He kept his stats up.

The stretch was a thousand feet from an intersection to the east, forcing Milo to use a small parking lot next to a tax preparation office where he hoped he wasn’t run off. To the west, the next parking was the Fox County Credit Union, Deangela. She wondered how many local jokes there were about the initials. Felix parked in a residential cul-de-sac a block and a half north.

Deangela picked up the tail when Correa drove past. Left onto McDougall. Milo paralleled south then west attempting an intercept, while Felix headed west on Maple to catch up. Correa turned east again on Association Street. She passed the tail to Milo. Felix had just caught Deangela, when Milo reported that the cruiser was parking behind a place called JJ’s Bar and Grill.

Correa called in. Security check of the city maintenance site.

Deangela asked Milo if he could park there. Milo said it was closed (Saturday) so no. Too conspicuous. But there was a river walk, he said. He parked less than a block away where the trail passed the bar. He saw a pedestrian bench.

An old man sitting on a trail bench was pretty believable. Even had a cane as a prop. By the time Milo sat down, Correa was on foot. Milo crossed his arms to conceal his phone.

“Rabbit headed west on foot from the bar through an alley behind city road maintenance site. Look for a high fence, a salt barn, some big-ass machine, and a twenty-foot pile of cinders. Set up on the westerly street, not sure the name.”

“Chadburn,” replied Felix. “Got it. De?”

“Roger, turning left. Follow me.”

Chadburn. Shabby residential street. They parked in tandem just in time to see Correa appear in their mirrors from between two trashy yards.

“Rabbit’s entering a house with his own keys,” she reported. “Milo, stay put. Felix, go park next to Milo and stand by. Then he’s yours, guys. When he leaves, I’ll get the address. Somethin’s not right here.”

She waited less than ten minutes. Correa returned through the same alley.

“If there’s a chance you’ll be made,” she said, “peel off. We’ll rendezvous later. We have his callsign.”

“Roger.”

“Roger.”

She already liked working with Felix. He was good at this. He took directions well.

169 Chadburn was a shabby two-story cottage-style house. Chipped shingles and loose roof flashing. Shallow half-portico. The front storm door was missing its glass. The steps were treated pine, warped with age and unpainted. She imagined splinters in her bare feet. The portico half-wall and the first story were covered with a grimy fake-brick veneer. Second story, damaged vinyl siding. Sky blue maybe, once. The dirty white trim was flaky, soffits and sills rotten and sagging, gutters filled and hanging loose at one corner. The double-hung window upstairs had a flap of screen hanging out like a dog’s tongue. Lower window with an olive-drab blanket hanging over the inside. In front, naught but a weedy gravel parking space with no perceptible borders. Incongruously parked in that spot: a mint-condition 2020 midnight blue F-150. Jacked wheels with black OEM rims. Big shiny aluminum box abutted to the tailgate.

“So wrong,” she whispered.

35

Skegum, Michigan
October 11, 2021

Overlooking the town stood a spherical blue welded-steel water tower. “SKEGUM” printed in black on opposing sides. The Latino “east end” sat in the shadow of the tower, surrounded by a sprawling industrial brownfield of abandoned manufacturing outfits, rail junctions, storage facilities, grimy family auto shops, and salvage yards. Their rendezvous point in emergencies. They sat in a shack called Rosa’s Tamales. Space in the “dining area” for two small tables. Drive-through window in the front. Across Bee Highway were Taquerita Mona and Jada’s Tienda Mexicana, each only marginally larger than this place.

Deangela, Felix, and Milo all had hot coffee in Styrofoam cups and chilled bottles of Jarritos. They’d split a dozen (good) pork tamales with salsa verde. Felix supplemented lunch with an order of fried chicken gizzards that he shared with Deangela. Milo declined, saying he didn’t “eat guts.” They’d opted not to talk shop. The open kitchen was around six feet away. Deangela wolfed her food and texted Farah. Work focus had displaced some of their gloom over Connie Mason.

Outside, they piled into Deangela’s car.

“Gonna follow up on this crack-house lookin’ place,” she said. “Our guy has a key. Why does a cop have a key to a place like that. Place oughta be condemned, and there’s a fifty-thousand-dollar truck parked out front? Felix, how big’s our budget?”

“Whatcha need?”

“A sub-contract.”

“For what?”

“I need to know more about Correa’s father in Long Island.”

“Why?”

“Listen to her,” interjected Milo.

“We need to anticipate his actions. Actions come from motives, motives from desire. Desire’s developmental. This guy grew up with his father. Just his father. He learned how to want what he wants from what he saw his father wanting. And how to go after what he wants. He’s also competing with his father, in a sense, because they want the same things. Prestige, power, control, whatever.”

“Sounds like profiler stuff. You do that?”

Milo cackled.

“You mean like entering into an [air quotes] unsub’s mental architecture and mapping out his bizarre fantasies? God, no,” she said. “Quackery, that stuff. Totally intrasubjective.”

“Intrasubjective? Okay, you just did a flyover.”

“Motives aren’t internal conditions like an endocrine disorder, unless you’re talking, like, schizophrenia. They’re learned. From models.”

“Models.”

“We learn to like things the same way we learn our native language. It’s social. That’s why men liked plus-size women back in the day, and then they were supposed to like scrawny girls, and now they want buff girls.”

“Fashion?”

“That’s part of it, yeah. We learn first by imitation. You watch a little boy, he walks like his dad, a little girl, like mom. Learn about Correa’s home life, especially his dad, you learn about Correa. The rivalry thing, that’s like Oedipus. Daddy wants X, Son learns to want X, Dad and Son become rivals. Belizean proverb, ‘put two of the same kind of people in a bag, see who comes out first’.”

“Take your word for it. This necessary?”

“I don’t know. Maybe. That’s why I asked about your budget.”

Her phone vibrated. She answered.

“Yes . . . really? Really!? . . . Okay, yes, and thank you . . . Let me check. I’ll ring you back . . . Thanks, again . . . Bye.” She looked up at Milo and Felix. “Doc. Hector. Says he’ll review the Mason files.”

“That help us?” asked Milo.

“Yes,” said Deangela and Felix together.

“You want in on that?” she asked Felix.

“No,” he replied, eyes down. “Go ahead with that sub-contract.”

“Milo, can you make the calls?” she asked.

“Sure, kid.”

Felix said he was exhausted. Went back to the room in Dundee. When Deangela asked, he said “old age.” He was pale, his cheek twitching vigorously. Milo returned with him to Dundee for a nap.

She’d wait until dark to check out the “crack house.” For now, she went back to Chadbourn Street and did a daylight walk-past to see if she triggered any dogs. As she walked, she texted Doc. Six pm okay? tecumseh park?

He replied with a thumbs-up emoji.

Silver hyundai santa fe

Another thumbs-up emoji.

Two dogs started yapping north of the crack house. Noted.

Driving back downtown, she caught Correa’s callsign on the scanner. Traffic stop on Bee Highway. She headed South on Main. Took a left on Bee. Spotted Correa’s Interceptor in the parking lot of the Gilbert Harrington Correctional Facility for Men. State prison east of the brownfields. Four-way stop and a rail crossing. Correa was in the parking lot talking to one of the guards. So, not a traffic stop.

Across the highway, a house sat empty for reconstruction, the crew off for Columbus Day. A train whistled to the west. She pulled in, broke out her 200-800 zoom, rolled in on the guard’s face, and took a fifty-shot burst.

*

“Got him,” grunted McInnery. “Ten-code for a traffic stop.” He’d just looked it up on his phone.

They’d prevailed on Farrell to rummage through his backroom contacts for Correa’s call-sign. Farrell called them clueless fucks, but found it nonetheless. Took him long enough.

“Over by the prison,” said Haldane, looking at the GPS. “We can get there in five minutes.”

Correa stood in the prison parking lot with a guard. Haldane and McInnery couldn’t find a discrete place to park, so they tried left turns to orbit past the place. The first left ran them a hundred feet north then diagonally northwest for more than half a mile past a weedy, skeletal power substation, before they took another left on a poverty-stricken dogleg called Wabash Street. Off Wabash, they took Rail Street south past two abandoned factories, where they were stopped for five and a half minutes by a passing train, then left again on Bee Highway, where they unkowingly passed Deangela’s silver Santa Fe going the opposite direction.

Correa backed out to leave the prison parking lot. Haldane and McInnery loitered as long as they could at the four-way stop, feeling conspicuous. They caught Correa leaving the prison and heading west. There was no traffic, but without any shoulder on the road, they were forced into a three-point U-turn in the intersection.

“Shit,” said Haldane. “Step on it.”

“It’s a thirty-five zone and you want me to accelerate behind a cop?”

“I didn’t say that, but he’s not runnin’ radar on his six, is he? Get closer.”

“We have his call-sign. Relax. Look, a cannabis shop. Shall we buy you a gummy for your nerves?”

“He just went right.”

“I can see. Christ!”

*

Deangela called for a powwow back at the motel. At just after three, they met in her room. Felix looked alarmingly washed out and laid on her bed. Milo sat next to him, notebook at the ready. She sat in the wobbly chair.

“You okay?” she asked.

“It’ll pass,” said Felix with a weak smile.

To Milo: “Where are we with daddy issues?”

“Put a Long Island guy on it for a day. Agency called Cognizant. Good reviews. Came correct on the phone.”

She’d linked the camera to the television to display one of the snapshots from the prison parking lot. Puffy guy. Ears a little too high on his head. Short brown hair full of cowlicks that even gel couldn’t tame. Eyes small and close with pale brows. The kind of face that could be seen and forgotten within a minute.

“Productive day, I think. Felix, you were right. Correa’s wrong. His little pit-stop at that house and his confab at the prison are all one thing. I’d bet on it. That house is a lab or stash house. Truck parked in front of it’s worth more than the house, and what’s a cop doin’ with a key to that wreck?” She nodded at the television. “Then he floats over to the prison for a handoff with this guard? Walks like a duck, quacks like a duck. Milo, we need an ID on the guard?”

“We do. My intel? Michigan prisons are swimming in drugs. Meth and coke especially. They’re compact and portable. Only way that stuff gets in in any quantity is by guards. They triangulate with family and friends on the outside through cash apps. Stuff goes in with everything. Ink pens, rolls of antacids, up the guards’ asses, you name it. These guards search one another other, so . . . takes a village, if you get my drift. Lotta money to be made, especially for high school grads with starting pay under forty. Corner this fella, might be able to shake something out of him about Correa.”

“Agreed. The guard went on shift today, if that’s what he was doing, at one o’clock. Doesn’t strike me as a shift change time, though. You be okay tomorrow, Felix?”

“Got a bug. Tell you in the mornin’.”

“Milo, you chase down the guard?”

“Sure thing. Lemme start in the mornin’. Guard mighta been on lunch today. Print me off the best picture you got. I’ll see if I can chat with some visitors, chase it down that way.”

“Cool. You guys get some rest. Gonna get a closer look at the crack house tonight.”

“You need a lookout with you,” objected Milo.

“Agreed,” said Felix.

“I appreciate it, gentlemen, but no. I’m not making entry. I’ll do a lost dog routine or whatever. Check apertures, gas tanks, and smells. In and out. Best guess, unknown second’s cooking meth in there. Here’s the truck plates. Gonna meet Doc in a while.”

“Put me on record,” said Milo. “Going to that meth house alone is an extremely bad idea.”

“Agreed,” said Felix again.

“Noted,” she said. “The I-told-you-so box is open.”

Silence. Felix looked away at a spot between a blank wall and the floor.

“C’mon, gentlemen,” she said. “We’ve been on one day, and we already have a line. No one knew, and no one here did what was done to Connie.” She wasn’t sure she meant it.

“Farrell,” said Felix. The others looked at him. His face twitched electrically.

“Farrell?” said Milo.

“Farrell’s guys did it. Sure as eggs.”

PART FOUR

For some time now the impression has been growing upon me that everyone is dead. It happens when I speak to people. In the middle of a sentence it will come over me: yes, beyond a doubt this is death.

—Walker Percy

36

Tecumseh, Michigan
October 11, 2021

A morose bank of clouds swelled in the southwest as the day dimmed across the pond on the edge of the park. Leaves scattered, stuck to the water, shivered, and skated. The air was compressed with the scent of rain. A fox squirrel sat on a picnic table, tail fur trembling in the wind. A cardinal skimmed across the shadows like a drop of blood. Deangela sat behind the wheel, the folder of documents held tightly in her lap like a child gripping a teddy. Doc’s truck pulled into the parking lot in her rearview. She took long, deep breaths through her nose and blew them out slowly through her mouth.

Doc parked alongside. Hopped out and slapped the door shut. He peered in the window, eyes mournful. She waved him in. He reached in to shake her hand first, an oddly reassuring gesture.

“Hey, Doc.”

“Hey, Deangela.”

“De’s fine.” Her shoulders relaxed and fell an inch. “You’ll wanna save syllables.”

Flash smile. “How do we do this? . . . You okay?”

“I’m nervous . . . scared really. I don’t get scared. Much.”

“Your dad?”

“Spent years trying not to think about this, and now . . .”

“I get it. I try not to think about it either, if that helps. I know it’s different, but a lot of bad things happened over there.”

“I know. Well, I don’t, and that’s partly why I’m here. I guess. I don’t know what happened.”

“Look, I need some reassurances here. Right after the . . . thing, me and the rest of that team were pulled into a room where this scary nameless dude threatened us. With prison. A long time in prison.”

“So, why’d you come?”

“I don’t know.” He looked outside. “Expiation?” There was the Catholic boy.

“Lotta that going around.”

“I know this client?” he asked, looking back at her.

“Good question. And one I can’t answer. I mean, not just because confidentiality [air quotes]. I just really don’t know.”

“So, he, I’m assuming a he, is, or was, military?”

She signed zipping her lips.

He took a deep breath. “This is like playin’ charades,” he said, rubbing his face. “So,” he pressed his hands together like he was praying and rocked them as he spoke. “The client’s after Pedro. Maybe might be possibly ex-military.” He paused to think about it. “Bad conscience?”

She was impressed. Doc was quick on the pick-up. She found herself liking him, and it surprised her. Maybe something to do with her father? How quickly these penitent ex-military types—like Felix and Doc—seemed to grow on her?

He went on. “I didn’t know Pedro but about a year and a half, and we were split up after the time when your dad was—”

“Killed, it’s okay. I know.”

“Yeah. I don’t know where Pedro went, but like I said before, or maybe I didn’t, this guy, he’s a moral dead letter. No trace of a conscience . . . unlike, apparently, your client.”

“Or you.”

“I can say this. Because it’s probably still true. If you’re not lookin’ into something sexual with Pedro Correa, including violence, you oughta be.”

Big mental note.

Fat raindrops started smacking the windshield, a few at first, then a sudden and heavy downpour. In the cab with Doc, in this rain, Deanglea had a kind of déjà vu about playing in cardboard boxes when she was a kid. That enchanted sense of close-dwelling.

“I could give you this packet,” she said, holding it up like a dinner offering. “Or just quiz you, and you give me what you can in return.”

“Fair enough. First question?”

“Gene Pollard. Fratricide?”

He blew out air, faced the floorboard, hands between his knees, and rocked forward a couple of times to assent.

“Okay, was my dad killed by his own men?”

“No.” Fast. “So, okay, here’s where I go way out on a limb. Because he was your dad. He was shot the next day. In town. By Afghanis. Unknown. We think. You didn’t hear this from me.”

She recalled A.D.’s Silver Star narrative:

MSG Dale and SFC Pollard left their security positions and conducted an audacious frontal assault, providing the rest of their team the freedom of maneuver necessary to successfully engage a force far superior in numbers to their own. They were met with withering fire, and both continued to move forward against the Taliban insurgents even when mortally wounded.

‘Another mission?” she asked.

“No . . . okay . . . fuck . . . sorry . . . okay, look, he left the mission, okay?”

“Left what mission?”

“The mission where Gene was killed.”

“What do you mean, left?”

“Your dad, I think, may have had some kind of . . . I don’t know, breakdown?” Her face froze. “He goes with us on the mission. A mission he basically plans, actually, but we’re a shit team, and we mess it up royally. Partly because he leaves the team during a night movement.”

“Leaves? Not gets lost?”

“Leaves. Your dad was an ex-Delta operator. They don’t get lost. He walks away into the night just before we reach our target and somehow ends up in Kabul the next day. That’s where he’s killed. We never know who or why.”

This explained what Connie said, about the change from one to two KIAs on the second day.

“He was broken already,” she whispered, tears brimming while she reached in the glove box across Doc for a napkin to wipe her nose. “Before he got there.”

“What?”

“He was broken . . . you said a breakdown . . . that follows . . . he was . . . strange . . . before he left.”

“Yeah, some of the guys, they said he was off.”

“Off how?”

“The guys said he was humming or singing to himself sometimes. Songs, pop songs. He was doing it when I came in for the interview, ‘Cielito Lindo,’ I think.”

“He sang that to me when I was little.” She smiled and sniffled. “And he did that here. Before he left. Go off into a little thing where he sings pop songs to himself but changes the lyrics into nonsense. And cognitive breaks, like little mental jump cuts.”

“They think he might’ve killed three people in Kabul? Two American contractors and a Chinese guy.” Connie’s pimp.

“What? Why? Or maybe there was no why.”

“Actually, I think there may of been. The guys they think he killed were a couple of . . . I don’t know . . . contractor thugs. Everyone hated ’em, and they had the run of the place, no rules applied. And the Chinese guy, he was a pimp.” He said it like the word was a wet turd in his mouth. Connie, confirmed again. “He peddled girls, I mean like thirteen-year-olds.” One more affirmation. “They were all found together at this guy’s [air quotes] establishment.”

She looked at her lap, wiped her nose, took two long breaths, and looked at Doc, her gaze scanning his face.

“You okay?” he asked.

She blew out air three times, like someone breathing into a paper bag. “It’s a lot. Sorry. Go on.”

“I might’ve caused it,” he said. “In fact, I think I did.”

“Caused him to leave the mission?”

“No, yes . . . no, I mean, the pimp, the contractors. I told him about the place, the young girls, all of it. Guys on our team, they went there. Called it ‘the Chinese Restaurant.’” Connie again. “He must’ve mentioned it after. Probably to our Captain. Next day, word gets around. Guys think it’s me that blabbed. It was, actually. Then I’m the detachment rat.” After a long pause, his voice rose with a defensive outrage. “They were kids! Middle school age! Little girls! Our Captain, too! Most of the guys! He was nice to me, your dad. I tell him I want out of the Army, and he’s nice like. Understanding. So, I tell ’im about the girls. It was fuckin’ eating me alive. The whole place was, the killing, that thing Pedro and Gene . . .” He blocked himself.

“What thing?” He pressed his fist against his lips. “What thing?” she repeated.

“They did something, together, before the mission. Pedro and Gene.”

“What? What’d they do?”

“Mahmudiyah. You said Mahmudiyah. At my house.”

“What about it?”

“I’m pretty sure, in fact I’m totally sure . . . they raped and killed two women . . . a woman and a girl, Afghanis. Just two days before the mission. They shot ’em after.”

They both sat quiet for a while before she spoke.

“Lord, have mercy!”

37

Dundee, Michigan
October 11, 2021

Felix had dozed off in his room when they returned from Skegum that afternoon. An insistent bang on the door woke him. His mouth was stale, his face jumping.

“What the hell, Felix?” she asked when he opened it. Her hair and face were soaked, her streaming rain jacket whipped against her by a wrathful downpour. Her eyes were wet and bright, jaw set. She didn’t ask to be let in. Just pushed past him leaving soggy tracks on the cut-rate carpet.

“W-w-what’s g-going on?” His stupor dissolved, face fluttering like a dying bird. She folded her arms like armor across her chest.

“You were there! You knew my dad! You were there when he was killed!”

“No—”

“Don’t you lie to me, mister. I’m about to pack my bags.,” Jabbed her finger at him, “So don’t you fuckin’ lie to me. You knew him. I just had a chat with Doc Fermin.” Felix lowered his eyes. “He told me. My dad wasn’t [air quotes] killed in action. He was killed in Kabul during some kind of mental breakdown.”

“I didn’t kn-n-n-ow him-him.” His cheek was twitching violently, his right-hand trembling. Felix was gray. He wobbled to the edge of the bed and tried to sit, missed the bed, and started sliding onto the floor.

“Whoa! Whoa! Hey!” She grabbed him by the arm and helped him onto the bed. “What’s going on?” He breathing was shallow and rapid, lips pursed.

“Minute . . . it-it-uh p-passes.” He wadded his hands into fists by his side.

“I’m calling 911.”

“No, no, don’t.” The rapid respirations started to subside. “D-don’t please. It passes, really.” She sat beside him, not sure whether to touch him or not.

Within minutes, his color began to return.

“Felix, we need a heart-to-heart now. I wanna know about Afghanistan, but what’s this? The tics? The so-called allergy meds? This aphasia thing?”

“Aphasia, huh.” He gave a weak smile.

“I grew up with a Special Forces medic and a nurse. I can quote the Merck Manual. That speech thing that just happened.”

“A.L.S.,” he said.

She froze. Her anger liquified. The wind slapped another sheet of rain against the window.

“No.”

“Yes.”

“No. No, you mean . . . like Lou Gehrig’s disease?”

“The same.”

He’d settled, like a switch had been thrown.

“But it’s, I mean, isn’t it . . .?”

“Terminal? Yeah.”

“No, no, there’s people—”

“Longest living survivor, Stephen Hawking. Apparently, I’m not him. Shoulda taken up theoretical physics.” His smile was self-mocking.

“So—”

“Maybe another two years, prob’ly less. Two months or so, I’ll be on a cane. Meds mostly control the muscular stuff. Forgot mine today, sorry. The crying fits, they come on unexpected. Laughing fits, too. Cooking breakfast, taking a shower, at a store; it can be pretty embarrassing.”

She folded into herself, then uttered something between a grunt and a scream. “Shit, shit, shit, shit, shit!”

“If it’s any comfort,” he said, “I like you, too. We got that report already. Just by the way.”

38

Brenda Fowles
COGNIZANT Investigations
East Rockaway, New York
Harp & Dale Investigations

Durham, North Carolina
October 11, 2021

SUBJECT: Filiberto Damian “Phil” Correa
493 West Bay Drive
Long Beach, New York
DOB: March 3, 1965, Age 56 years
Marital status: Married (third time), once divorced, once widowed
Children (2): Cecelia McRae Fulton née Correa—36, Pedro Rafael Correa—34

“Phil” Correa is the successful owner of his own insurance company, Safe Shield Indemnity, 4936 Peppermill Road, Hewlett Harbor, New York. His legal net worth is between $2.7 million and $3 million, but there are indications, based on his travel, that he may have unreported assets in Panama and the Cayman Islands. His home on Long Beach (Long Island) is valued at $2 million, with four years left on the mortgage. The rest of his personal assets appear to be in an account with Chase and a portfolio with the same in securities. His business accounts are held separately from his personal account and are not included with his net worth.

He graduated from in Newburgh Free Academy (High School), in Newburgh, New York, in 1983, and followed in his father’s footsteps (retired Air Force, then successful insurance broker), completing his Business and Management degree with Mount Saint Mary’s College, and interning for his father, Anton Correa. While in college, he married Magdeline “Maggie” McRae, who gav birth to their daughter, Cecelia, in 1995. The couple lived with his parents, until “Maggie” filed for divorce nineteen months after the wedding, citing infidelity. His “mistress,” Evelyn Scott, was pregnant with Pedro when the divorce proceedings began.

Correa married Scott after the divorce was final a year later, when his son was six months old. Anton’s lawyers successfully argued for liberal visitation with Phil’s daughter, Cecelia, and the new couple (Phil and Evelyn) moved to Hewlett Harbor, where Anton had opened a new branch of his business within mile of where Evelyn’s family of origin lived in Hempstead, New York.

Pedro is fluently bilingual. His father saw this as an advantage in business and life. Pedro attended public school in Hewlett Harbor, graduating in 2005, and joined the Army shortly afterward.

In 1997, Evelyn called police with a report of domestic abuse—battery and imprisonment (locking her in a tool closet). Filiberto mounted a successful defense in court, and she filed for divorce shortly after, citing physical, sexual, and mental abuse, as well as serial infidelity. She moved back in with her parents in Hempstead, and was killed, ostensibly during a mugging, sixteen days later. Police claim to have investigated Correa for the murder. The assets to which she was laying claim during the divorce were considerable. Police were unsuccessful in obtaining sufficient evidence to charge him. Correa and the Chief of Police, Randall Gough, from East Rockaway, both belonged to the Rockaway Lake Country Club and were known associates. Gough was plagued by accusations of corruption in 1999, including that he was running the local drug trade and a stable of prostitutes, and resigned, whereupon he and his family moved to Zimbabwe (which has no extradition treaty with the US).

Pedro Correa’s father married again in 2006, to Charlene Mallamo (now 46), daughter of Bartolo Mallamo, owner of the popular three-state Mallamo’s Pizza franchise. The couple resides in Correa’s Long Beach home. Rumors are that she drinks heavily and is seldom seen away from the house, though the couple do host parties there for special clients, business associates, and some of his Long Island neighbors. Rumors also circulate about these parties, to wit, that they are attended by a lot of young and attractive women as well as people associated with the Long Island cocaine trade.

Suggested follow-up: Cecelia Fulton, 507C Hobart Avenue, Missoula, Montana 59804. Phone: 406-601-1304. Husband: Quinn Fulton, Library Director, University of Montana.

10:45 p.m. Thunder rumbled in waves, the rain still flaying. The storm postponed Deangela’s reconnaissance of the “crack house,” and the three of them were gathered in her room. Deangela looked up from the report at Milo.

“Harp and Dale?” she questioned.

“Yeah. Made you a partner.”

“Fictional?”

“Hell no. I’m retired, or retiring, whatever. The agency has a good client list. This is my last hurrah. Yours if you want it.”

“Let me think on it.” She was touched. “This report’s helpful. Felix?”

He was reading his own copy on his laptop. “Wow,” he said. “Should we call the sister?”

“Yes,” said Deangela and Milo in unison.

“So, Doctor Freud,” said Felix to Deangela, “What does this tell us?”

“We’ll know more when we call the sister, obviously, but from the starting gun it tells us that accumulating money, no holds barred, is a family virtue. There’s a Glengarry Glen Ross vibe here—”

“Sorry, what?”

“Play by David Mamet. Won the Pulitzer. About real estate agents in a Darwinian struggle that reduces them to amoral animals in their quest to sell. But here’s the thing. Money’s a means, not an end. Other desires are the drivers. Recognition, fear, love, status, control, domination, whatever.”

“This is like working with a college professor,” smiled Felix.

“That’s funny. So, Pedro’s making money on the side. Probably a lot, or why take the risk of prison? Daddy teaches him that too much gold attracts the Smaugs of the IRS and the Federal Trade Commission. So, it’s cleaned and cloaked.”

“Money laundering?”

“Almost certainly. If Brenda Fowles can trace Phil’s travel to the Caymans and Panama in seven hours, then there’s little doubt the Southern District of New York could do the same if he ever blips on their radar. I don’t think we’ve got an in with anyone there . . . Milo?”

Milo shook his head.

“My guess? The apple fell directly under the tree. Our guy probably has accounts in some of the same havens. Someone local, though, to do the wash. And this guy, he’s a misogynist, something we already know about his son. Doc’s convinced Pedro Correa and Gene Pollard raped and murdered two women in Afghanistan.”

Felix grunted like he was in pain.

“You okay?” she asked.

He looked up, tears in his eyes.

“Nearly had an accident earlier today,” he said. “I think I need to stop driving.”

“The hell’s goin’ on?” asked Milo.

Deangela sat silent.

“I’m sick,” replied Felix. “Neurological thing. We’ll need to turn my car in.”

“Kind of neurological thing?”

“Lou Gehrig’s.” Felix just spat it out.

“Lord, have mercy,” said Milo, the report forgotten. “Advanced?”

“Well. More advanced maybe than I’d anticipated.”

The crying stopped as quickly as it started.

“Shit,” said Milo. “Man, I’m sorry.”

“There’s stages,” Felix sad. “I thought I was early middle, but I might be later middle. Goin’ a little faster than anticipated.”

“You make it sound so clinical,” said Deangela. “Aren’t you afraid?”

“I’m afraid of the paralysis. Muscles that permanently contract. The crying thing is called pseudobulbar palsy. Just showed up lately. Makes you laugh like a hyena sometimes, too. Respiratory weakness not far behind. Pneumonia. Then difficulty swallowing. I love my food. Treasure every bite now, but eventually someone’ll cut a hole in my belly, pop in a tube and feed me that way. This will [air quotes] extend my life, or so they say, but by then with everything else, including rapid cognitive decline, they’ll be fighting the fires of cardiac issues that could—if I’m lucky—result in a massive, fatal heart attack. Did you know that, back in another century, they called pneumonia ‘the old man’s friend’?”

Deangela snatched a handful of cheap sandpaper motel tissues. Theodora: God takes us back a piece at a time.

“So, this is your final mission?” asked Milo, looking at him with a combination of sadness and shared understanding. “So to speak.”

“So to speak,” Felix affirmed. “Been thinking.”

“That’s dangerous,” said Milo, and Felix snorted.

“I think I may need to come clean, just in case, you know. But I want to know if y’all are willin’ to carry this. I tell you the whole deal, and I put you in a big fuckin’ legal trick locker. I already got these government gorillas on your asses.”

Milo and Deangela exchanged a look.

“In for a penny,” said Deangela. “Your call, though, Felix.”

“Go,” said Milo.

39

“I’m ex-Army. Black and gray stuff. I was there. In Afghanistan. I’m compiling a record. For publication. Don’t know where yet. Of a massive cover-up. Oh, and we assassinated a journalist. That’s what’s exercising Farrell and company.”

Deangela shuddered. Gaston Villeneuve.

Milo frowned. “We?” he asked.

“Not me, personally, but I was involved in the cover-up. Tangentially.”

“So, Correa?” asked Deangela.

“Oh, that fucker. No, I want him because he’s a menace to society with a badge and a gun.”

“That’s what Doc told me,” said Deangela. “Wait, can Correa bolster your plan to expose a cover-up?”

“Maybe. He was there, for one thing. But I hate him, or what he is.”

Deangela processed it. The light came on.

“You aimed me at Doc. All along.”

“And Connie Mason.”

“Why not approach them on your own? Why use me?”

“Connie Mason mistrusted former officials. Turns out she was right,” Everyone looked down. “I was an officer then. Workin’ with the cover-up crew. Fermin, he’d met me, in a manner of speaking. I was the JSOC spokesman who rather emphatically warned him and his team to remain silent or go to prison.”

“Will he go to prison for what he just told me?”

“Not on my word, and not if we go public through cutouts. If they think it’s just me, what’ll they do? Kill me?” He smirked.

“Not funny,” said Deangela.

“But we withdrew from Afghanistan,” said Milo. “Just two months ago.”

“An assassination order,” said Felix. “Interdiction, they call it. Requires permission from the National Command Authority.”

“The President or the Secretary of Defense,” said Milo. “Shit.”

“So, tell me,” said Felix, “what’d Fermin have to say?”

She ignored the question. Responded with another. “Did you know my dad?” He hesitated. “Felix?”

“You’re a guided missile.”

“And?”

“Not in the context of the mission, no.”

“So how?”

“Way before that. Just after he’d been selected for Delta. I worked there in the training section. Easin’ my way out then. He was doin’ the basic operator training course. So, I knew of him. Spoke to him occasionally. Never intimately.”

“What was he like?”

“Considered very promising. Physically and mentally tough. Smart. And sober. I mean, with a sober attitude. The unit itself could be very out-there. Alcoholics and even a few batshit carzy fuckers. So, we liked him. Saw him in leadership one day. He had that thing, an old man’s reserve and patience.”

“Anything else?”

“I left a little after he came. Went to JSOC. Had some authority issues. I was not sober. Promotions stalled, so they used me as a kind of fixer.”

“Doc said Daddy wasn’t killed on the mission.”

“Your father walked off the mission. Never heard of that before in my entire career. Just left his unit in the middle of the night. Deserted, essentially. Roamed off into hostile territory. Alone. No one’s sure why.”

“Jesus Christ,” said Milo.

“Then how’d they find him?” asked Deangela, knowing some of the answer.

“He turned up the next day in downtown Kabul in a stolen vehicle. Shot dead on the street.”

Deangela winced. Milo sighed and rubbed the back of his head.

“Why? How? Who?”

“Unknown Afghanis, not sure why. Theory? Retaliation for an incident that even had our so-called allies agitated. He was alone. Easy target. We . . . they think . . . thought . . . that he walked almost twenty-five miles into Kabul. You got the summary from Connie Mason and Fermin? Contractors? Whorehouse?”

“I did.”

“It was the contractor’s vehicle with him when he was shot outside a market less than two miles from there.”

“The contractors and the proprietor were dead. Did he kill them?”

“Seems probable.”

“Why?”

“Can’t say. Word was, he’d provoked one of the contractors earlier. Giant gaping asshole named Virden. No great loss to be honest. Virden was one of the two killed with the Chinese guy. Other guy, I forget his real name, but they called him Peanut. I mean, why were contractors with a pimp, right?”

“But why would he have . . . I don’t know . . . just taken off like that?”

“His mind wasn’t sound.”

“You think?” said Milo.

“Then again, it was sound enough to survive all the way to Kabul, alone, and zero in on these guys. Like he was on his own personal mission.” They went silent, Deangela thinking about Monterrey.

Felix spoke again first. “What did Fermin know about Correa?”

“Shit,” she said. “That. Yeah. Okay, he filled out what Connie said. Her reference to Mahmudiyah. Gene, the [air quotes] innocent victim of fratricide, along with Correa, did something really bad together. Or so Doc thinks. He thinks they went on their own into a nearby village and killed two women, or rather a woman and a girl.”

“Bakhtawara and Storai Yusafzai.”

“You knew?”

“I do now. We knew about it. That’s [air quotes] the incident I referred to. The story the French reporter was about to run when he met with the National Command Authority’s little accident—a car bomb.”

“Assassination,” said Deangela.

“Correct. We suspected the Yusafzai killers were Americans. Contractors or soldiers. We didn’t know who’d done it. They raped the girl. Killed both her and her mother.”

“But you suspected it was Correa.”

Felix’s face began squirming on the right side, like insects were under the skin. Then the tears as his right arm seemed to levitate.

“Felix,” Deangela and Milo blurted at once, diving for him.

He held up his left hand. The spasm passed. The tears continued.

“Don’t mind me. I do this at the drop of a hat.” They waited for him. “Yes, it figures in. Back then, I treated the whole incident as a footnote.”

The sobbing resumed in earnest.

40

Skegum, Michigan
October 12, 2021

Reports now indicated, contrary to the received wisdom and to the delight of conspiracy theorists, that Covid-19 was a US gain-of-function research creation, leaked from a corner-cutting Chinese lab. Ethiopia had opened an offensive against the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (whoever they were). The United States House of Representatives approved an extension of the debt ceiling until December.

Milo Harp and Felix Sharpe sat in the parking lot of the Gilbert Harrington Correctional Facility for Men listening to NPR news. The day’s headlines were followed by an insipid piece about the perfect ratio of peanut butter to jelly on a sandwich. The weather had cleared since last night’s storm, and frigid pink fog lingered in the low ground.

Felix had grounded himself as a driver. He’d almost lost control of his car yesterday, nearly forcing a blue-haired old lady into the path of an oncoming semi. “Got enough to answer for already,” he’d said. Milo sat next to him now, quietly dismayed that this younger man, one he’d grown to like in spite of himself, might beat him to the end of his story.

Prison visiting hours began at 10 a.m.

9:37, and they were in position. In hand, they had high resolution 8x10 color photos of the unknown guard. Long shot, but they had to try.

*

Marchnote Motel

She lay in her underwear, curtains closed, lights out, staring at the ceiling. The heater was stuck, and the room was eighty degrees. She’d stayed behind that morning to “catch up on documentation.” Too risky at this stage staying on Correa for two days running. Or so she’d said.

Murder in Monterrey. The lie about her father’s heroic end. Connie. Felix. Milo’s declaration that he’d cede his business to her. Shit was too much. A rogue wave of ruptures. She longed for the Shamrock camp. Or a spliff. Or a spliff at the Shamrock.

Her sleep had been interrupted repeatedly by heat, runway thoughts, and convulsions of panic, that she’d endeavored to chase away by reading some tartan-noir potboiler, only to keep losing her place.

She needed to call Correa’s sister, Cecelia. Deangela had run the apps on her. Stay-at-home mom with three kids. Right now, it was only 7:37 AM in Missoula. Cecelia would be feeding them, dressing them, herding them onto school buses.

Deangela pulled on jeans, a long sleeve tee, her black hoodie, and her bluejay ball cap. Locked up. Drove to the Speedway for coffee. Carried the coffee with her into the giant Cabela’s store along US-23.

Stiff mark-ups on the fishing tackle to cover the overhead on their retail behemoth. The décor included, of course, elaborate taxidermal animal action displays; but they also carried some tackle that couldn’t be easily sourced, i.e., single-hook in-line trout spinners. Three Panther Martins and two Mepps set her back almost thirty-five dollars. They worked for more than just UP trout. One trip to Arkansas with Daddy, when she was just fifteen, she’d caught a dozen smallmouths on the little lures while canoe-floating the Caddo River.

Another nineteen bucks netted her a Redhead Crosshatch blue-and-white Hawaiian shirt on Fall clearance. She returned with her plunder to the decrepit room. Tapped in Cecelia Fulton’s number. A woman answered on the first ring.

“Hello . . . no, take this with you [to someone else] . . . sorry, hello.”

“Hi, I’m sorry, are you busy?”

“No, just a second, my husband is late for work . . . bye honey. Just another sec . . .”

In a minute she was back on.

“Okay, sorry, who’s this?”

“Is this Cecelia?”

“It is.”

“Hi Cecelia, my name’s Deangela Dale. I’m a private investigator. May we talk?”

“About what?” Cautionary tone.

“Your brother.”

“Oh.” Long pause. “What’s he done?”

“It’s just an inquiry.”

“I should tell you, I haven’t had contact with Petey since I was eighteen. And only occasionally before that. We grew up in separate homes.” Petey.

“That’s fine. I’m willing to hear anything you have to say.”

“Will it get back to him?”

“Absolutely not. Strictly confidential.”

“So, what’s he done? I know I asked that, and this is ‘just an inquiry,’ but if there’s an inquiry about Petey, I’m assuming he’s done something.”

Deangela deflected. “Did you get on with him? As a child?”

“Sure, right up until he was about nine, he was sweet as honey.”

“What happened?”

“He started becoming our father.”

“Meaning?”

“Meaning the boy-child whose infantile narcissism should have been suppressed as part of his development into an adult. Instead, it was enabled by an infantile narcissist parent.” Cecelia had some passing familiarity with developmental psychoanalysis.

“I take it you didn’t get along with your father.”

“You’re quick, lady. Sorry . . . this is kind of a sore subject you’ve ambushed me with. My father beat my mother. He harassed her at every opportunity after she left him. He denounced her to me on every forced visitation throughout most of my childhood. Then he killed Petey’s mother, and Petey became his twelve-year-old cheer squad during an investigation that was run by one of Daddy’s golf pals. I used to throw up before every visit. I was fucking medicated at age ten.”

“Sounds like a nightmare.”

“My mom came out here with us. To Montana. A New York girl. Out here with mountains, cow shit, and NRA stickers. That’s how much she needed to be away from him. She put a continent between them. What would you think of a man who hired an escort to take his son’s virginity?”

“Whoa!”

“Yep. That’s Phil. And Petey grew right into his shoes. When I was sixteen and Petey was fourteen, Petey was already calling me all kinds of bitches and putitas, and trying to get in my pants. Phil used to laugh about it. He trained a little woman hater. I was the one locked into a closet at Phil’s place for nine hours once, after Petey basically tried to rape me and I put a knot on his head with a ten-pound dumbbell. He never tried it on with me again, but not long after, we found Winston, my basset hound, dead in our back yard. He was disemboweled.”

“Oh, geez!”

“So, what’s he done?”

“Did you know he’s a policeman?”

“Christ on a cross! They put the fox in the henhouse. He’s a cop? For real?”

“In Michigan.”

“I thought he was in the Army.”

“Out for eight years now.”

“Petey with authority and a gun. Holy shit.”

“He ever involved with drugs?”

“Petey? Nah. The saving grace of growing up under Phil’s tutelage was that Phil counselled his male spawn to exercise moderation with intoxicants. All the better to take advantage of those who don’t.”

“Pretty Machiavellian.”

“Machiavelli was a fucking altar boy. Phil was an insurance salesman who nearly ran Long Island. He killed his son’s mother so she couldn’t get her divorce settlement.”

“Gettin’ the picture. You have my number in your phone now?”

“Yeah.”

“It’s temporary, but if you think of anything you’d like to add, can you call me?”

“Will it lead to holding him accountable? For anything?”

“Maybe. No promises.”

“Then, sure.”

“Another thing. Please. Can you keep our conversation confidential? I mean, from anyone. It’s very important.”

“Call me back when the investigation’s done?”

“I will.”

“Then yes.”

41

Skegum, Michigan
October 12, 2021

“Mind if I ask you something?”

Renee Boykin was the fifth person Milo approached in the prison visitors’ parking lot. Between fifty and sixty, he figured, and worse for the wear. Her bony frame had shifted and slid out of proportion from what Milo surmised was an abundance of alcohol. Sun-leathered face. Spiderweb tat on her neck. Unflattering skinny jeans and a Mickey Mouse sweatshirt. Hair shaved on the sides, with a long bottle-blonde braid hanging back off the top. Nose ring and bilateral lines of ear studs. Milo was pretty sure there were pictures in her house with her on the back of a Harley. Or maybe the front. She lit a cigarette. She wore seven rings and had tattooed wrists. Some done in a cellblock. Milo brought her the photo.

“Sure, hon.” She exhaled a cloud of smoke as she spoke. Her voice crackled like water hitting hot oil.

“Ever seen this guard in there?”

“Not in there.” She gave a bronchial laugh. Her crooked teeth, still hers, were stained with coffee, tobacco, and a hard-bitten chronology. Two bicuspids missing. “He works there, but that’s Xander McKenzie, with an X. I used to babysit him when he was little. Whatcha wanna know ’bout Xander for?” She looked Milo in the face. Smiling, like she was just glad to be talking to some old fart she didn’t know.

“It’s confidential.”

“C’mon hon, you’re some kinda investigator, right? I didn’t just fall off the turnip truck. He sellin’ drugs?” The cigarette was in her mouth now as she squinted and fished her keys out of her jeans. Rainbow collection of Narcotics Anonymous key tags.

“Why would you ask that?”

“Before he got respectable with that DOC job,” she pronounced it doc, “Xander was one of the best meth cooks in southeast Michigan. I should know. I was in bondage to that shit.” She held up her keys and jingled them like a tambourine. “Never got caught, Xander. Prolly cuz he never used his own product.” Another croupy laugh. “Like some of us. He sellin’ in there?” She tipped her head toward the razor wire.

“Can they sell in there?”

“Sweetie, when I was at Huron Valley, it was easier to buy in there than it was when I was runnin’ the streets. Lot pricier, but you got door-to-door delivery.”

“Who’d you visit today?”

Her smile disappeared like the sun sliding behind a cloud.

“My boy.”

“Very sorry.”

“You need anything else?”

“No ma’am. I’m Elvin, by the way.” His middle name. He offered his hand. She took it like it was a live bird she didn’t want to injure.

“Renee, hon.”

“Mind givin’ me your number? Case I need to call you about it later?”

She thought on it, then looked up.

“Why the hell not. You’re not some crazy stalker, are you Elvin?” Another nicotine laugh.

“No ma’am,” he replied, handing her his notebook.

She wrote and handed it back.

“Call if you need to, but don’t use my name with other people, ’kay.” He signified his agreement with a little bow. “You be careful ’round here askin’ questions, Elvin.”

“I will. Thanks.”

“Take care, hon.”

She headed for the prison to see her son.

Milo climbed into the Accord. Felix gave him a questioning look.

“Paydirt,” said Milo. “Am I too old to fall in love?”

Felix looked as if he was seeing Milo for the first time.

*

Deangela called Sharpe-Harp as she pulled into the Skegum’s Big Boy. The smell of fried onions hit her straight in the appetite. Inside, she ordered fish and chips, the only thing apart from the breakfast menu that she really liked. Couldn’t miss with battered cod. Or cornbread and slaw. Or strawberry pie, so ordered had a slice of that, too. With root beer. And coffee.

“Coffee now?” the waitress asked after taking the order. Tall black youngster—maybe nineteen—thick through the chest and shoulders. Medium length straightened hair, red lipstick that needed touching up, and false eyelashes that her big almond eyes didn’t need. She seemed pleased Deangela was there. Deangela returned her smile.

“Yes, please.”

The place was filling up for lunch. She gazed around. Mostly heavy people, big boned, not like her petite people on both sides. Mostly plain, without the urban ostentations of people back home in the Triangle. She flashed on Ginni Langhorst, feeling suddenly overwhelmed by this visible history: the destruction of their unions, the enclosure of their farms, lost factories and lost futures, the dissolution of their families, their faithless politicians, the bitterness of broken promises, the contraction of their houses of worship, and the expansion of lines outside methadone clinics. There sat an older couple with their adult Downs Syndrome son. Three short stout Latinos, looking exhausted already, their jeans and shirts covered in what could be concrete dust. Two late teen girls with new tattoos and piercings, cynicism already crowding out their childhood fantasies. A woman, Deangela’s age, who’d invested time and effort into gyms, clothiers, and cosmetics, and wasn’t receiving sufficient attention to repay the outlays. Another weary waitress with a smacked-on smile who needed her tips more than her pride because her children had outgrown last year’s winter coats. An anxious-looking man dressed for sales, maybe 60, with a mild middle-age spread, a broad flat face, blue eyes, graying brown hair, and a snow-white mustache. Deangela was suddenly laid hold of by Theodora’s last words before she’d slipped into irreversible unconsciousness.

“Dead flies. The city must be punished.”

Pedro Correa walked in wearing his uniform and bearing a folded newspaper. He sat with the sales-guy.

Shit!

Her chest thumped and her stomach rolled. Two tables away, tall, stern, and handsome. When he scanned the room, his gaze fell on her for an extra millisecond. Suggestion of a flirtatious smile, but beneath it . . . she abruptly and unexpectedly saw something else. Inside all that armor, the face of a ten-year-old boy, little, lost, and afraid. Something in her wanted to draw the entire room to her like an infant. Daddy was there, and Theodora, and Felix wasn’t sick, and Milo wasn’t old, and Mama wasn’t sad, and this policeman was no longer a violent psychopath.

Her waitress poured coffee for the sales guy and Correa, breaking Deangela’s reverie. When the waitress left, Correa laid the folded newspaper on the table, leaning in to speak privately with his older companion.

Felix and Milo walked through the entrance door.

They clocked her. Then they clocked Correa. She motioned them in with a tip of her head when they hesitated. Correa didn’t know them, and in the wake of her empathic interval, she felt oddly audacious. The men kept their eyes off of Correa and sat.

The waitress was back in a flash with the coffee pot—Felix no, Milo yes. She took orders. Club sandwich with just-water-thanks (Milo). Chili with sweet iced tea for Felix. (The northern barbarians drank their cold tea unsweetened, and you had to ask.)

Correa stood. He left the folded newspaper on the table with Mustache.

Then Renee from the prison walked in like the perfect storm. Milo whispered, “Fuck me,” when Renee spotted him.

“Elvin,” she called out too loudly, walking over and offering her hand.

“Renee,” Milo said, taking it. “These are my friends (he winked at her four times in succession), Candice and Bill.”

Correa alerted. He studied Felix with an interrogative expression. Felix wished the fuck he’d not tied his hair back and exposed the ear. He turned his face to conceal it.

“You get hold of Xander, yet?” asked Renee asked, again too loudly. Correa’s interest went warm to hot at Xander’s name. Milo was still trying to facially signal Renee to shut the hell up. It took her a second, then she got it. “Oh,” she said, her voice dropping to a whisper. “Sorry, I’ll leave you guys to eat.” Milo smiled weakly.

“Goddamn small towns,” he muttered after she left.

*

Correa toured the parking lot, taking down plate numbers. McInnery and Haldane sat in the van across the street watching him.

Correa couldn’t place beardy-man’s face, but he was sure he’d seen it somewhere. Then that old bitch talking about Xander—his Xander? How many fucking Xanders were there in this town? He hadn’t joined the dots, but there were suddenly a lot of fucking dots. He was on his highest alert since he’d done the Freebooters. Right when he was passing forty thousand to Ralph. Was Ralph trying to set him up? Who the fuck was that trio in Big Boy? When he finished recording all the plate numbers in his phone, he sat in the cruiser and waited for them.

Twenty-five minutes later, they exited. Loaded into two vehicles, black chick in a silver Santa Fe and the two older dudes in a white Accord.

From across the street, Haldane and McInnery watched, too.

42

“We need to trace the guy with the white mustache,” she told them on the three-way, both cars on the road. “Our guy passed him something in that paper.”

“We’re burnt,” said Milo. “I need to look into Xander McKenzie, too.”

“What now?” asked Felix.

“Stay behind me,” said Deangela. “Petey’s on you.” Petey since her talk with Cecelia. “I’m gonna turn right and head back to Big Boy to tail Mustache. You stay straight and try to shake Petey. And watch for a silver van. It’s been on Petey’s Interceptor since we left.”

“Fuck,” said Felix.

“What?” said Deangela.

“Farrell’s boys.”

“Just doesn’t get any better,” said Milo.

*

“Get Farrell on the horn,” said Haldane. McInnery did.

“What’s goin’ on?” asked Farrell.

“We have a dilemma,” said McInnery. “We found them all.”

“What?”

“In some felicitous alignment of the universe, they all converged on the same restaurant at the same time. Correa burned them. As we speak, we’re following Correa, and he’s behind the Three Musketeers. They’re split between two cars.”

“Three Musketeers?”

“Felix, Halfrica, and, believe it or not, the elderly detective, Harp. So, who do we follow?”

“Felix.”

*

Deanglea turned right. Correa stayed on Felix and Milo. So did the van. She arrived back at Big Boy just in time to catch Mustache sliding into a black Audi A4.

On US-223, the Audi pulled into a sprawling one-story office parking lot: Bagley-Fabiszac Insurance and Realtors.

“I’ll be damned,” said Deangela to herself. The money laundry.

She slowed to give Mustache time to go in, then parked behind the Audi. When she got out, she pressed an empty Styrofoam coffee cup onto his rear bumper and, with the heel of her hand, smeared on a little white streak.

*

The customer service window was nested in the rear of a cavernous waiting room, attended by a 200-pound, fifty-something bottle-brunette with a balloonish sixties hairdo. She gave Deangela “the look,” recuperated, and reversed with an insincere hundred-watt smile that paid for some dentist to send his kid to college.

“How can I help you?”

“Yeah, I’m sorry, but I’m afraid I bumped another car in the lot. It’s not much, but I want to do the right thing. It’s a black Audi.”

“Oh, my, that’s probably Ralph’s.”

“Ralph?”

“Ralph Fabiszac, dear. He’s one of the owners. Shall I get him?”

“Yes, please. And I’m so sorry.”

“I’m sure it’s okay,” she said, not meaning it, punched a button on the phone, and told Ralph he needed to come to the front desk.

Ralph greeted Deangela with a leer.

“I’m Ralph,” he said, sizing her up like a steak, eyes lingering on her crotch. He offered his hand.

“Candice,” she replied with Milo’s ad hoc pseudonym, concealing her discomfort. “I think I bumped your car.”

“Well, then, let’s go look.” She could feel his eyes on her ass as they walked out.

When she showed him, he rubbed at the white streak. It came straight off. He inspected a bit more closely, and, not seeing any actual scratches on the finish, stood again and smiled.

“No harm done, Candice. So, what were you dropping by the offices for?”

“Just passing by and wanted to pick up a copy of your real estate listings. I’m interviewing for a nursing position at the hospital.”

“That’s wonderful,” he said, giving her the creamy-eye. She shuddered inside. “Let’s go inside and get you one.”

*

She called Felix and Milo. They told her Correa had peeled off, but the van had stayed on them.

“They know what they’re doin’,” said Milo. “Discreet for a one-car follow. I broke ’em off by a cemetery in Deerfield. We’re headed back to Dundee. I always feel like I should say that with a Scottish brogue. We’re gonna turn this car in. Felix says he feels okay just to follow me to Ann Arbor.”

“All this action invigorated me,” said Felix.

“Well, this should invigorate you more. Think I found who washes Petey’s cash. Outfit called Bagley-Fabiszac Insurance and Realty. The point of contact is Mustache Guy from Big Boy, aka Ralph Fabiszac.”

“Don’t know whether it’s good shit or bad shit,” said Milo, “but shit’s happenin’ today.”

“I gotta check out the crack house tonight,” Deangela said.

Milo grunted. “Not a good idea. Not alone. You need a lookout.”

“I heard you.”

“Not sure you did.”

*

Farrell was pissed.

“You fuckin’ lost ’em?”

“They took us out some country-ass road with two cars on it, ours and theirs. We had to fall way back,” explained Haldane. “They’da burned us.”

“They did fucking burn you, you moron. That’s why they led you out on some country-ass road.”

43

Marchnote Motel
October 12, 2021

“Big Brother stuff you got there,” Felix said.

“Apps, software, online shares and services,” said Milo. “Lotta investigators over-rely on it, but it’s essential now. Privacy’s dead as a rock, and we don’t even know it.”

“Ray of sunshine, Milo. What’s Bigger Brother say about Xander McKenzie?”

They were in Milo’s shitty room instead of Felix’s shitty room, Milo bent into his laptop, Felix hovering behind him.

“Says he grew up in Onstead, town about twelve miles from Skegum. Big family. Six siblings. One died an infant. Dad made decent money. Asphalt contractor. Mom taught high school science. He took after Mom. Aptitude for math and science. Renee said he’s a cook-master. I could infer his association with a white-biker syndicate out of Detroit, the Freebooters. Rough boys, charge sheets between ’em would be the fuckin’ Encyclopedia Britannica. Xander, though? Nada. Boy stayed clean as a kitty.”

“How’s he connected to Correa?

“Maybe here,” said Milo, scrolling. “2015, he’s taken in for questioning by County in connection with a drug investigation. Released. Maybe he goes on Correa’s radar then, who knows? Four months later, he’s working for the Department of Corrections.”

“What’s his employment before then?”

“Get this. Self-employed motorcycle mechanic.”

“So, the guys he cooks for back him up with bullshit receipts.”

“You’re quick, amigo. I promise you this guy knows a lot more about the chemistry of ephedrine than he does about repairing knuckleheads or Milwaukee eights.”

“Somehow, Correa’s takes this guy over from the . . . what’re they called?”

“Freebooters, yep.”

There was a knock at the door.

“It’s me,” they heard. Deangela.

Felix let her in. She had a dozen fresh donuts and three coffees.

“I come bearing gifts.” She opened the box of donuts on the bed and passed around the coffees. The smell of hot dough and fried sugar filled the room. “What’re you guys up to?”

“Xander McKenzie,” answered Milo.

“The guy your girlfriend mentioned in front of Petey?” she asked.

“The same.”

“Our prison guard?”

“Yes,” Felix and Milo said in unison, each reaching for a donut.

“What’ve you been up to?” asked Felix, biting off half a donut.

“Family place in Skegum. Morning Glory Bakery.”

“I mean besides donuts.”

“Ralph Fabiszac,” she said. “Petey’s buddy from Big Boy. This guy’s a big fish in this little pond. Insurance and real estate. Perfect for doing laundry, if you get my drift. Oh, and he’s also the Chair of the County Commission.” She bit into a donut with a little grunt of pleasure.

“A picture begins to emerge,” said Milo, who was still studying his donut. He took a small bite. “These are superb.”

*

Skegum, Michigan
October 12, 2021
8:15 p.m.

She’d driven into town and had a late supper of undercooked beef and overcooked pasta at a never-again place called Taste of Italy.

“The crack house” was backed up to a wooded and well-trashed runoff that drained into the River Raisin. She parked two and half blocks away next to a bridge that gave her access to a sandbar in the river and a concealed avenue of approach through the woods behind the house. She wore Walmart Wellingtons, black jeans, and her black hoodie. Three different cameras hung on her neck. Pepper spray in her pocket (bad dogs, bad men).

The sky was overcast again. Skegum’s lights reflected off the low clouds and cast a gray-green hue reminiscent of a corpse. The damp wood smelled like lawn chemicals. A distant dog sounded off on the opposite side of the woods.

A light burned inside the house. The F-150 was parked out front.

“Shit,” she whispered.

Stopping at the treeline, she studied the house for motion-sensor lights and cameras. Seeing none, she edged closer through the crabgrass, plantain, and thistle in the back yard. A crack of light escaped past a blanket on the back window. She peeked inside.

Two men.

Two women.

Two dogs.

She gasped. The room was lit with three tripod mounted LED panels. One man operated a camera. One woman—tall, blonde, Nordic, wrapped in nothing but a sheer housecoat—stood alongside him, holding one of the black and tan Rottweilers by the collar. Man Two assisted the other Rott to mount the second woman. Small, black-haired Sarah Hyland lookalike, on all fours and completely nude but for spike heels (for the dog?). The camera rolled.

“Shit,” she whispered again. She’d taken five shots, when one of her cameras bumped the side of the house.

Both dogs inside went nuts.

She ran, cameras clattering, into the woods, as the window blanket was yanked aside behind her, throwing a raw beam of light across the back yard. She squatted behind deadfall near the stream in what she hoped wasn’t poison ivy.

There was a commotion inside. The front door slammed twice. The lights went out. The truck engine roared to life. Tires squealed on the pavement.

She sat very still for around five minutes, then backtracked toward the car. She was thinking she should’ve listened to Milo, when the spotlight hit her.

“Police,” a woman’s voice on a loudspeaker announced. “Stay where you are.”

“Fuck,” she whispered. She held out her hands to avoid being shot.

*

“What were you doin’ down there at night?”

She sat in the back seat of an Interceptor. A female patrolman was behind the wheel. The male sergeant twisted in the passenger seat to ask questions through the cage.

“Photography.”

“At night?”

“Yes, Sergeant.” Show deference to the rank. “I do low-light photography. Of wildlife. I have my portfolio in my car over by River Street Bridge.”

“Your driver’s license says you’re from North Carolina. They don’t have wildlife in North Carolina?” The female watched Deangela’s reactions in the rear-view mirror.

“Yes, sir, but I’m here for the Sand Hill Crane nests. This county has a lot, especially in Irish Hills. Skegum’s a pit stop. Then I’m headed to the U.P. My family has a fishing camp there.”

Good cover stories are ninety percent true: Milo.

“You’re in the river bed. Any cranes there.”

“No, sir. I saw a fox and tried to follow it.”

“You were out at night, patrolling for foxes?”

“No, sir. I just had dinner at Taste of Italy. I was headed back when I saw the fox. Target of opportunity. If we can go to my car, I’ll show you my portfolio, Sergeant. I’ve won prizes.”

“Go ahead,” he said to the driver.

“White Santa Fe.” She pointed up the street. “It’s a rental.”

They pulled in behind the Santa Fe, headlights on. The female looked over Deangela’s shoulder while Deangela popped the hatch and rummaged for the portfolio. The cops hoped she was on the up and up. They really didn’t want the paperwork.

“Right here,” she said, handing them a thick album.

They paged slowly through it in the headlights.

“These are really good,” said the woman.

“They actually are,” he agreed. His name tag: Baer, R.

“Here’s my receipt from supper,” Deangela said, holding it out.

The woman looked at it and handed it back.

“How was it?” Her name tag: Chester, R.

“Owned by your friends or family?” Deangela asked.

“No,” both cops answered at once.

“Not great, then.”

“Place is nasty,” Chester, R. agreed. “Try Dusty’s next time. Best burgers in town.”

Sergeant Baer pulled Deangela’s cameras out of the Interceptor and handed them back to her with her driver’s license and her pepper spray.

“Good luck with the cranes. Where in the U.P.? Your family’s camp?”

“Out near Tahquamenon Falls.”

“Nice. Stay outa trouble, ’kay?”

“Yes, sir.” She offered her hand to each of them. Then they left.

“Fuuuuck,” she whispered.

44

Skegum, Michigan
October 13, 2021

Morning shift debriefing. Lieutenant Cox from night-shift presiding. Correa’s mind wandered. He’d slept like shit. After the Big Boy thing, Cijay Nash had called to say the film session was blown up by a peeper. Entirely too much shit going on at once.

“. . . maybe the most interesting stop, black female in the riverbed near Chadborn and Michigan Av . . .” Pedro alerted . . . “wading around in rubber boots with three cameras on her neck. Claimed to be a wildlife photographer stalking a fox. Sergeant Baer and Patrolman Chester check out her story. Turns out to be true. One Deangela Dale, from North Carolina, is here to photograph Sand Hill Cranes. She has an extensive portfolio including multiple prizes. Sees the fox as she was driving from Taste of Italy.” The shift groaned at the mention. “And chases the animal into the riverbed. Just goes to show, never judge a book by its cover.”

Dale, Dale, Dale, he rolled the name over and over. Then it hit him, along with the guy at Big Boy, The Ear.

“Fuckin-A!”

“What’s that, Pete?”

“Nothin’, sir. Sorry.”

After the briefing, he stopped Chester as she headed out. Asked her for the make, model, and plate of the Dale stop.

*

Dundee, Michigan

“I owe Milo an apology,” she said. “You were right. That was a dumbass move.”

They were in a booth at Bricktown Diner, picking their way through omelets and washing them down with ice water and coffee.

Milo made no reply. Not one to rub anyone’s nose in it.

“How badly are we exposed?” asked Felix.

“Like strippers at the end of a set,” said Milo. “After Big Boy and last night’s stop, we can assume everybody’s got a line on us. Correa. Cops. Your DC goons. You’re the client. Whaddaya wanna do?”

“What can we do?”

“Two options,” said Deangela. “One, we pull off with what we have. Two, gut it out, cat and mouse.”

“Are we the cats or the mice?” asked Milo.

“Fair question,” she said. “The thing last night’s kinda big. Your guy isn’t just involved in drug trade and money laundering. He’s got a super-repulsive, highly illegal, and extremely exploitative porn enterprise.”

“Dogs,” Milo said, looking down and shaking his head.

“Zoo porn, they call it. Milo, you remember the Professor Porn job?”

“Gawd!”

“Professor Porn?”

“Few years back,” she explained, “we had a client who’d, in my considered opinion, watched so much porn himself that he’d become convinced his wife made it in her past. I had the unfortunate task of scrolling through around sixty hours of [air quotes] homemade pornography looking for his bride. Great paycheck, but I needed therapy afterward.”

“You find her?” asked Felix.

“Nope. Guy paid us to feed his obsession.”

“How do you guys do it?” he asked. “This all sounds kinda depressing.”

“How’d you do your military time?” asked Milo. Milo looked kind of gray today.

“Compartmentalized.”

“Well,” said Milo. “There you have it.”

“Didn’t always work,” said Felix.

“There you have it again,” Milo replied, his voice sounding strained. “Some shit in life, you just gotta carry.”

Deangela turned to Felix. “So, what do we do?”

“You okay?” asked Felix, looking at Milo, whose color was disappearing with a sudden intake of breath.

“Milo?” Deangela cried. He was sinking into the booth, one eye starting to close. “Milo!” The other patrons alerted to her cries. “Call nine-one-one,” she told Felix. He was already doing it.

*

The ambulance had taken Milo to Monroe Regional Hospital, fourteen miles away. Deangela and Felix followed in the Santa Fe. She struggled to stay calm. Felix started crying again. It’s the ALS, he told her, and she said she understood; but she didn’t understand anything except that the dark angel was on both of these men’s doorstep, and she was fucking paralyzed. Again.

“It’s a stroke,” she said.

“What?”

“His eye closing on one side. Hemiparesis. A stroke. He has a blood clot in his brain.” Felix looked over at her.

“People survive strokes.”

“He’s eighty-one.”

“Still . . .”

They stood when the doctor came back to the waiting room. She was thirty-something, South Asian, small with a pixie cut. Name tag: Rajput, Rhonda.

“It’s a TIA,” Dr. Rajput said.

“Stroke,” Deangela said to Felix.

“Minor one,” the physician corrected. “You got him help quickly. That’s good. He seems otherwise quite healthy for his age. We’ll keep him for a few days for observation and administer blood thinners, but his prognosis is good.”

“Can we see him?” asked Deangela. Felix was wiping his eyes with a tissue.

“Of course.”

*

The text told Haldane and McInnery to call their boss.

“Halfrica fucked up,” he announced in lieu of a greeting. “And Milo Harp’s in the hospital. Maybe I need to replace you assholes with a drone.”

“Whaddaya mean, fucked up?” Haldane wasn’t rising to the bait. Obviously, Mrs. Farrell didn’t give up any pussy last night.

“She was stopped by the cops.”

“By Correa?”

“No, not him, but the Skegum PD. Fox hunting or some shit. Kinda muddled. Her car’s a rental.”

“The Hyundai?”

“The very same. Tags are Romeo Alpha one one six three zero seven. You might pick ’em up at Monroe Regional Hospital. The geezer had some kind of heart attack this morning. He’s in the Cardiac Care Unit.”

“Shall we go?” asked McInnery.

“Duh, yes, you fucking shall. Get your asses over there and stick a tracker on her car.”

45

Monroe, Michigan
October 13, 2021

Milo sent them away after two and a half hours. His speech was a little slurred, but his color was back, and they’d put him on something that made him sleepy. Deangela and Felix told him they’d be back tomorrow, and headed to the parking lot.

On the way out, Deangela’s phone went off. Doc.

“What’s up, Doc?” she said before she even realized, “Oh, shit. That wasn’t deliberate.”

He laughed. “Happens all the time. Where are you?”

“Monroe. My boss, Milo, had a stroke.”

“What!? Your boss is here? How is he?”

“Minor, they say, as if. He’s out of commission. What were you calling about?”

“I’m worried about you.”

“You called to tell me that? That’s my mom’s job.”

“I’m coming to you. I rearranged my schedule. I’m gonna work with you on this. If that’s okay.”

“Just a minute,” she said, covering the phone and turning to Felix.

*

“Shit, here they come,” said Haldane. “Hurry the fuck up.”

They were in the hospital parking lot. McInnery placed the tracker in the Santa Fe’s wheel well.

“Done,” he said, standing. He spotted Felix and Deangela not twenty yards and ducked again. “Shit, they’re right here.”

“Crawl,” said Haldane. And so they did, all the way to the van.

*

“It’s Doc,” she said to Felix, phone covered. “He wants to join us.”

Felix looked like a man caught between the burn and the frost. He gave a deep sigh.

“Okay,” he said. “At your room.”

She uncovered the phone and gave Doc the address. He said he’d be there in an hour.

*

Dundee, Michigan

Felix laid on Deangela’s bed. She sat on the edge with a string, playing cat’s cradle.

“We need to get new rooms,” she said. “Maybe someplace decent? Everybody and their mother knows we’re here now.”

“True.” He gazed at her. “How’d you start workin’ with Milo?”

“Oh,” she said, putting down her string, “Old family friend.”

“How old?”

“Since around 1967. He was a Durham cop before that. They were breakin’ heads over the civil rights stuff, and one day he’s had enough. Kinda like you. For his sins, he goes to work for my great granddad. Frank Simmons. You can still look him up. Shit hot civil rights attorney in Durham. Milo figured working for him would level out his karma. Stayed with him until Frank’s fifty-eight-year-old heart just stopped in the middle of a deposition. Man lived on coffee, cigarettes, and Bourbon by all accounts.”

“I don’t follow. How’d you get with him?”

“Oh, well . . . Daddy’s daddy was like you. Special Forces guy. In Vietnam.”

“Is that why your dad went that way?”

“Probably. Justin Dale, family legend, twenty-four, killed in Vietnam in 1969, Northern II Corps . . . I grew up on that story.”

“Still not following how this gets to Milo.”

“Patience, sir. Daddy’s mama? Schizophrenic. Full blown after she lost her husband. Heard the voices of angels and movie stars. Became engaged to a Confederate general once. Great-grampa Frank and Great-granny Belle . . . his wife ’til she died in 1980 from cervical cancer . . . take Daddy and his older sister, Amy, to raise. Amy ends up with schizophrenia, too, so . . . something genetic, for sure.” She crossed herself. “Anyway, Daddy hangs around the law office with Frank and Milo. Like a little mascot. Daddy’s fifteen when his Grandpa dies. Tore him up. But Milo takes in both of them. Less than a year later, Amy takes off with some thirty-year-old drunken shit-head to Little Rock. She’s seventeen. Daddy hangs with Milo, but Daddy’s independent. Hell of a swimmer, too. Pays a chunk of his tuition for college. Anyway . . . when Daddy marries my mom . . . that’s a whole nuther legend . . . he takes her home to Milo. Daddy joins the Army not long after. Mama and Milo, they just stay in touch. Milo takes Daddy’s death hard as any of us, like it’s one of his own kids. In 2011, I start doin’ a few things for him.”

“’Kay, so what’s the mom and dad legend?”

“Oh that, yeah. Flash back to yesteryear, 1990. Daddy finishes his BA in English lit—”

“English lit?” Felix smiled.

“Oh, Daddy was a Shakespeare quote machine. Anyway, he decides to tramp through the tropics for a few months. Passing through Belize, he ends up in Dangriga, Mama’s hometown. One day, some shady tween swipes a garbage bag of money from two other shady characters. Shady Characters chase Shady Kid into an open-air market where Future Dad, recently graduated tramp-tourist, is buying his birthday breakfast. Shady Kid has thrown the garbage bag of money off a bridge and into the river mouth by the market. Hauls ass through the market, where he’s evaded his pursuers, and swims out to get his loot, which is now barely afloat and slowly bobbing out to sea. Suddenly, Future Dad hears a blood-curdling scream. Sees Shady Kid struggling in the water. Future Dad, the collegiate swimmer, dives in after the kid. Our hero. Problem is, the boy’s not drowning. Garifuna boys don’t drown. They’re born with gills, webbed feet, and dorsal fins.” Felix laughed. “Instead,” she continued, “Shady Garifuna Kid is tangled up with a Portuguese man-of-war . . . no shit . . . which proceeds to throw its hot tentacles around Daddy. Daddy manages to get himself and the kid to shore, but he’s in a bad way. Puking and passing out and whatnot. Who should also be in the market but a young nurse-practitioner on her way to a clinic she runs with two friends?”

“Your mom.”

“My mom. Gets Daddy to the clinic, nurses him to health, and within a week they’ve become (ahem) very close. Month later, they’re married, and he’s doing paperwork to bring her to the states. Seventeen months later, baby me.”

“That’s really fast.”

“When you know, you know, I guess.”

“Wow.”

“My origin story, yeah. I exist because of a thirteen-year-old thief and a poisonous jellyfish.”

“That’s maybe the best origin story I’ve ever heard. So, Milo really is family.”

“He’s one of my granddads, honorary. The living genetic one is Broca Gillet, Mama’s pop in Belize. He’s around seventy-five, I think. Shockingly still alive after living in a bottle most of his life. Mama was raised by the late Ofilia Gillet, her mom.”

There was a rap at the door. Felix looked up, a cloud of apprehension sweeping over his face.

“That’s Doc,” she said, getting up off the bed.

46

Doc was still in dusty work clothes. Threadbare jeans, work boots, and a pullover gray hoodie with his business logo on the right breast: a square frame with a crowbar, “deconstruction” written below it. He gave her a calloused handshake. She stepped aside to let him in.

It took a moment for his eyes to adjust.

“This is Felix,” she said. “My client.”

Felix was standing now, seemingly reluctant to move forward. Doc shook his hand. He squinted at Felix.

“Hector,” Doc said. “Or just Doc.” Still peering intently, he asked, “Do I know you?”

“In a way,” said Felix, and at the sound of his voice, Doc stepped back.

“What the fuck is goin’ on?” he asked Deangela, with a thunderous expression. “You’re him,” he said to Felix. “That guy. Major No-name.” Back to Deangela: “Is this some kind of set-up?”

“No,” she pleaded.

“It’s no set-up,” Felix said. “Swear. Just let me explain.”

“You guys know each other?” asked Deangela, bemused.

“Not exactly,” said Doc, just as Felix said, “In a manner of speaking.”

“This is the guy,” said Doc. “From Afghanistan. The one who told us we’d go to prison for the rest of our lives.”

“Yes. I was,” admitted Felix. “Please, Doc, sit. It’s no set-up. Just let me explain. Please.”

*

“The team treated me like a rat,” Doc explained. He was still processing what he’d heard from Felix.

He’d filled Deangela in, but Felix wanted the recap.

“When Top, her dad, did our get-to-know-each-other interviews, I dropped a roll of dimes. I was still devout. Mass every week. Pray over my food, and like that. So, I talk to Top. Tell him about the Chinese Restaurant. The guys boasted about how young the girls were. They called it ‘goin’ back to junior high.’ So, I tell Top, and I think he brings it up with Dunny, the detachment commander. But Dunny, he goes there with ’em, with the boys to the Chinese Restaurant. Anyway, Dunny tells someone, who tells someone, and there ya go. It’s me who told, so I’m a rat. Even before the mission.”

“Correa?” asked Felix.

“He went, too. Every time.”

“I mean the other stuff. The girl and her mom in Zama.”

“One night,” said Doc, “I’m woke up on my cot. People whisperin’ and bumpin’ around in the billet. It’s Gene and Pedro. They saddle up like they’re goin’ outside the wire, and then I hear a hummer. Then another one. Two hummers go out the gate that night. The boys used to bribe the dude, some contract dude on the gate, with hash they bought from the Chinese Restaurant.”

“Two hummers?” asked Felix.

“I’m sure of it.”

“Why would they take two?” asked Deangela.

“I don’t think they did,” he said. “I think your dad took the other. He left that night, too.”

“You think he was in Zama, too?” Her eyes welled. “That’s not . . . he wouldn’t—”

“I don’t think he did. Go to Zama. I been thinking ever since we talked. I think he went to Kabul. I think he was reconning the Chinese Restaurant. When he left the mission that night, he went to Kabul. How else would he know right where to go?”

“Shit,” said Felix. “What about Correa and Pollard?”

“They went to Zama. It was them. They killed that girl and her mom.”

“You sound sure,” said Felix.

“Later that night, after they left, I hear two shots from over by Zama. Hour later, those guys sneak back in the tent. I tricked ’em later, kind of confirming, you know. I put Pedro’s medical records where Gene can see ’em. Pedro has genital herpes, so I leave the record open to that page right over by Gene’s cot. It’s a long shot, but later on, Gene goes apeshit on Pedro about the herpes. I thought they were gonna fight. They kill two women, and the issue is fucking herpes!”

“Wow,” said Felix. “Fills in a lotta blanks.”

“Like when Gene was killed,” Doc went on, “and after the mission and all, you could see Pedro kind of relax. Like, you know, a no witnesses kind of thing. So, what’s he into now?”

“We’ll fill you in,” said Deangela.

Doc turned to Felix.

“The speech you gave us in Camp Virtue. That was the most offensive and blasphemous thing I’ve ever heard.”

A sad smile crossed Felix’s face.

“Had to make an impression. Couldn’t let you think you qualify for mitigation . . . or mercy.”

“Bobby was mad you said his penis was tiny.”

Deangela suppressed a smirk.

“Priorities, I guess,” Felix said.

PART FIVE

Motel money murder madness
Let’s change the mood from glad to sadness

—The Doors

47

Skegum, Michigan
October 14, 2021

Thursday. Warmer today, high of 55, and sunny.

They’d found an Airbnb place on Clark Lake in Jackson County. A clean converted bus with two bedrooms, a decent kitchen, good WiFi, and on off-season rate of $45 a night. Felix put a $1,000 cash deposit down in lieu of a credit card. A welcome change from the Marchnote Motel, albeit further from urban amenities.

They decided yesterday to drop both extraneous cars, keeping only Deangela’s Santa Fe. They had Doc’s truck, now. After having checking on Milo, Doc and Deangela shuttled the Blazer and Accord to Ann Abor.

By the time they’d settled, it was already almost four in the afternoon. They decided to meet Doc again. Anywhere except Big Boy. Place was like the Bermuda Triangle. The new meeting place was Superstition Park, a sprawling wooded complex with a refurbished seventeenth century farmhouse, a Frisbee golf course, an airfield for expensive model airplanes, four soccer fields, and miles of woodland trails. Also, picnic/party pavilions, one named The Pines, where they all three now sat. Deangela had picked up a burner for Doc and explained how they did comms in the cars. Felix would ride with Doc.

With Correa and Farrell’s crew having a line on them, they might soon be forced to break contact with Skegum. Which meant, she said, they’d “bear down hard now,” perhaps even making a bolder approach to see if rattling some bushes might cause a snake or two to break cover.

“I’m the one Farrell wants,” said Felix. “It’s the mission-slash-assassination Farrell’s outfit wants to suppress. I got enough on Correa. Not proof of anything, but enough to pass along to Michigan and Federal investigators. We got drugs, a prison dealer-slash-meth cook, money laundering . . . interstate shit there. Feds. We know he’s connected to the zoo porn. Shit, I can’t unthink that now.” He dug in his pants pocket. “Here’s two memory sticks, one for each of you. I revised my report on the mission last night. Even if they arrest me, you can still get these to the press.”

“I’m worried about Milo,” she said. “Farrell’s crew likely knows where he is.”

“I’ll sit with him,” said Felix. “Drop me back. He’s good company. I know on TV these guys would slip unnoticed into the hospital and put poison in his IV line, but, as Doc here can tell you, most of the stuff you see about secret government operators with hundreds of dark skills is horseshit.”

Doc snorted, then smiled and nodded.

“And your presence will keep them away?” she asked skeptically.

“Place is Grand Central Station. That’s what’ll keep ’em away. Me bein’ there’s just added security. I’m useless to you. I can’t drive. And I like Milo. We share a short timer’s perspective.” Deangela looked away and sighed. “When they release him,” Felix added, “we need to get him home.”

“Okay,” she agreed. “We’ll drop you. They get a release date, can you pay for the plane ticket?”

“Sure.”

“I’ll pick you up tonight. You be alright there all day?”

“It’s a hospital.”

“Touché.”

“I’d like more on Correa, but you can shut this down now if you need to. I already got enough to put drug cops and forensic accountants on him.”

“I’d still like to figure out who the women were at the porn house,” said Deangela. “Principle of the thing.”

“How you gonna do that?” asked Doc.

She gave him a Mona Lisa smile. “You and I are gonna do some bar-hopping.”

48

“I don’t drink much,” he told her.

“That’s okay, I don’t drink at all. We’ll nurse O’Doul’s.”

She’d printed the faces of the women at the porn house, appropriately cropped. They needed names. Thursday night wouldn’t be busy, but with what these women found themselves doing, for whatever reason, Deangela was pretty sure they drank and drugged.

What do women do, she wondered, to forget about men filming them having sex with Rottweilers? What does one do to forget about whatever led them to being filmed having sex with Rottweilers? She needed to know. Principle of the damn thing.

They dropped Felix at the hospital, parked Doc’s truck at Clark Lake, and left in the Santa Fe. It was sunset at 6:57, dead dark by 8:15.

They tried a place called Silver Dollar and another one called One Eyed Jacks.

No joy.

At 9:00 they entered Millicent’s Bar, a downtown joint, seedy, half a block off Raisin Street. The “Millicent’s” sign was cracked and peeled. The temperature was a chilly 43. Three unwholesome patrons, all white, stood outside the front door smoking cigarettes. Fat guy, fiftyish, dour visage, thinning hair, mutton chop sideburns, wallet chain, punisher t-shirt, inoculated from the chill with adipose and alcohol. Skinny woman with skinny legs and no ass, black hair from a bottle, same age more or less, curled inside a tan puff-coat with her cigarette hand free, dancing in place against the cold. Blonde guy, twenty-something going on forty, long greasy hair, goat beard, frayed denim jacket, eyes hollowed out by bad habits and hopelessness. The smokers emerged from their bitter private reveries as “the Mexican and the black chick” approached their den of drowned disappointments. They exchanged “the look,” bonded again now, if but for a moment, by the brown intruders.

Inside, Doc and Deangela were greeted by the sound of cracking billiard balls and a tinny rendition of Morgan Wallen’s “Wasted on You.” The place smelled like peanuts, reused grease, and spilled beer. Deangela counted seven patrons in a place that could accommodate maybe thirty. One more dissipated female of indeterminate age—somewhere between forty and dead—girthy, with bilateral sleeve tats and at least a dozen earrings, alone with her draft and something clear in a shot glass. Six men. All but one weighing in over 200, the exception in one corner looking like he was waiting for the restroom to shoot up. Both men at the pool table wore bib overalls, beards, and ball caps: John Deere and Make America Great Again. The bartender may have been Millicent herself. Tiny and old, easily seventy. Eyes almost concealed by hoods of loose skin. Strong hands. White hair, short and permed. About as welcoming at first glance as a North Korean customs agent.

Almost all the gazes, including the hooded eyes of the low-flying matriarch, turned to Doc and Deangela. They sat three stools down from the one person who didn’t care. A man staring paralytically into the residue of what looked to have been a whiskey sour. Long, thin limbs, hawk nose with a receding chin, shock of once-blonde hair, and a hanging roll of belly. Like he’d been colonized by an enormous slug. If drunk was “three sheets,” this guy was ten beds and the pillowcases.

Mutton chops, puff-coat, and goat-beard, re-nicotined, came in from the cold. Muttonchops sank into a chair at his table by near the pool shooters and picked up his orange juice (with vodka or gin). The other two went back to a corner table with half-empty bottles of Miller.

The mini-mistress of the establishment came over to Doc and Deangela, shoulders barely higher than the bar.

“Whatcha havin’?” Her smoker’s voice wasn’t as forbidding as the facial expression.

“Two O’Doul’s, please” Doc said.

“No O’Doul’s. Got the Beck.”

“Two of those, then. You Millicent?”

She cackled. “Christ, no. Bought the place with that name. I’m Leah. Lemme get your near-beers.”

“Not sure they like us,” he whispered to Deangela.

“You kidding?” She grinned. “We’re the most exciting thing that’s happened to ’em in a week.”

“You think any of them are armed?” he asked.

“MAGA and John Deere, maybe.” His whiff of paranoia amused her. “Thought you Special Forces guys were all black belts in Brazilian jiu-jitsu who shoot down fighter jets with crossbows and bite the heads off timber rattlers.”

He laughed and relaxed.

“All true,” he said. “But we’re defenseless against MAGA hats. They’re like Kryptonite.”

“Here ya go, kids,” said Leah with a smirk, setting two cold bottles on napkins. “Don’t drink these and get nekkid in here.”

Doc and Deangela snickered.

“Question,” said Deangela, unfolding the two pictures. “You know these women?”

“If they’re drunks, I prob’ly seen ’em. I’m open ’til three, so I’m like the last chance Texaco.”

“Ricky Lee Jones,” Deangela said.

Leah cackled again, taking the pictures.

“Know your oldies, do ya?”

“Some of ’em.”

Leah studied one page, then the other, then both again in turn.

“You got any better pictures?”

“Sorry, no.”

“This one, maybe,” Leah showed her the woman who’d been with the dog. “Head’s kinda facing down, but it could be Cricket Rose.”

“Real name?”

“Hell if I know. Round here, she’s Cricket. Rotates between county lockup and rehab. Comes here occasionally with another gal. Lemme think,” she said, “Mixed girl like you. Not as healthy though.” Leah snapped her fingers. “Poodle, she calls herself, that’s it. Believe that? Cricket and Poodle? Why you two drinkin’ near-beer and askin’ ’bout lost girls?”

“My sister’s missing,” Doc ad-libbed. “They may know something.”

“Where ya from, kids?”

“Tecumseh,” he said.

“Hope you find your sister, hon. If she’s with Cricket and Poodle, though, keep an eye on jails and hospitals. Sorry.”

“Thanks,” he said.

“See that guy back in the corner?” the bartender said. “Skinny one with dead eyes?”

“Yeah.”

“Ellery Duvall. Ask him about Cricket. He’ll try to shake some cash outa ya and everyone else in the bar’ll figure your shoppin’ for Schedule Twos. Your call. Gotta get back to my elite clientele.”

Doc and Deangela exchanged a look, grabbed their drinks, and headed over to sit with Ellery.

Startled, Ellery scooted his chair back, ready to run.

“What?” he cried out. Minus the catatonic at the bar, the whole place alerted to the show. Ellery’s ratty gray jacket hung over his chair. He wore a tank top two days overdue for a wash. Royal flush tattoo across his bony chest with an incoherent hodge-podge of images running down each arm. Dirty blonde, one month beyond a buzzcut. Whiskers that looked like they were in a drought. Rheumy eyes. Dreadful teeth. Old track marks on both arms.

“Easy, Ellery,” said Deangela. “Leah said we should talk to you.”

“You cops?”

“No, baby,” said Deangela, going for something motherly, “We’re lookin’ for my friend’s sister.”

“I know her?”

“Doubt it, Ellery. But you may know about someone named Cricket? And Poodle?”

He exhaled sharply, relieved. Gave them a diseased smile.

“Yeah, I know ’em. One of ’em your sister?”

Doc shook his head.

“They may know his sister,” said Deangela. Ellery narrowed his eyes, calculation paddling up to the surface.

“How much my information worth to ya’s?”

Doc looked to Deangela. She winked and turned back to Ellery.

“Twenty bucks.”

“Thirty.”

“Twenty,” she reiterated, placing the bill on the table next to his half-glass of flat draft.

“Yeah, okay. Whatcha wanna know?”

“This Cricket?” she asked him, unfolding the pictures on what looked like a dry spot. He leaned in.

“Kinda looks like it. Not a great picture, though.”

“How about this one?”

He picked up the other picture and held it up to the dim neon light of a Pabst sign.

“Nah, don’t know her. Poodle ain’t white. This girl’s white.”

“Know where we can find either of them, Cricket or Poodle?”

“Poodle maybe at The Island.”

“The Island?”

“Tittie bar up fifty-four. She dances sometimes.”

“Cricket dance too?”

“Nah. They’re sayin’ she’s got some other gig. Makin’ videos for some dude.”

“What kind of videos?”

“Yeah, you know, like maybe pornos or somethin’. Don’t tell anyone I said.”

“Why?”

“Some shit you don’t ask about, okay.”

“Know anyone who drives a midnight blue one-fifty, big wheels, fancy rims, kennel on the back?”

Ellery eyes shifted. He made a fist and tapped his mouth. “Nah.”

“Sure?”

His eyes skated down and away. “This’s Skegum. Everybody drives trucks.”

She opened her wallet and took out another twenty, slipped it to him under the table.

He leaned toward her, his face still down like he thought people would read his lips.

“Jace. Maybe.”

“Jace?”

“Keep your fuckin’ voice down, okay. Jace Valnicek.”

49

Ellery followed them out of Millicent’s. Headed out to convert his cash into a bump.

“Wow,” Doc said.

“What?”

“Mother lode.”

“Pretty productive stop, yeah. Strong reaction to this Jace character.”

“What was that about? The truck thing.”

“He’s the, uh . . . dog handler.”

“Oh.”

“Ready for The Island?”

“What?”

He folded his arms across his chest as they walked back to the car.

“The topless bar. Where Poodle dances. You okay?”

“Not my scene,” he replied. “I, uh—”

“It’s okay.” She stopped and faced him, gripping him by his upper arms. “I mean, it’s a job, right?” He blushed under a streetlight. She felt an almost maternal surge in response this burst of vulnerability. “I can go in, if you don’t feel you can. Truthfully, though? I’ll be the center of attention.”

He looked down. Kicked at some dry gum on the sidewalk.

“I can do it, okay. I’m just . . .”

She hugged him before she thought not to. When she released him he was still returning the embrace.

“I can go with you.” She avoided his eyes for an instant, then looked up again. “To be honest, though, it’s less conspicuous with just a man.”

“I don’t know how to ask around. Like you just did.”

“Acquired skill,” she admitted. “Look, just pay the cover, get another near-beer, and nurse it ’til you see all the dancers. You see her, you give her my card. You don’t see her, ask another dancer or waitress where you can find her. You’re comfortable with that, you show ’em the pictures. Okay?”

“Yeah, okay.”

“I’ll be out in the parking lot. Call if you need to. Ready?”

“Yeah.”

“Let’s go.”

*

North edge of town. Semi-circular strip mall. Parking lot stippled with treacherous potholes. Credit union branch, rental outfit, hairdresser, closed-for-good restaurant called Señora’s, payday loan company, a daycare with big ballons painted on it called Kiddy Kare, and The Island.

One story. Blue-gray brick exterior. Flat roof and two big louvered windows. The front was lit by concealed lamps behind a purple fabric awning. The three equidistant potted ferns under the awning were graveyard dead. In the leftmost window, a neon sign said “The Island,” with a green palm tree and the naked caricature of a green woman, provocatively posed, with ears and a tail like a cat. Seven vehicles in the parking lot, one of them orphaned across the strip in front of the credit union.

The guy collecting Doc’s cover inside the door barely looked up from his phone. Thirty, max. Tight haircut, clean shaven, tall, maybe six-three. Gastronome’s gut, but some real brawn under a black leather jacket. He took Doc’s ten without comment, stamped him, and returned to his phone. Eminem’s Shake That boosted from the stage, distorted by shitty acoustics. Dimmed can lights and a slowly rotating disco ball over the stage put Doc in mind of a roller-skating rink.

Trying to be Deangela, he counted heads. Nine male customers—seven white and two Latino. One bouncer—white gym rat with a shaved head and a theatrical scowl. One bartender—chubby white girl with a green butch haircut, covered in tats and piercings. One waitress—probably a dancer, taking a break from the stage. One bored, biracial dancer with skinny legs, chocolate-goddess braids, and boyish breasts half-heartedly doing squats and kicks around a pole to “Get buzzed, get drunk, get crunk, get fucked up / Hit the strip club, don’t forget ones, get your dick rubbed / Get fucked, get sucked, get wasted, shit-faceted.”

Deep, thought Doc to himself.

He sat down alone at a table away from the stage. The waitress dropped a tray with three used glasses back on the bar, handed banknotes to Green Girl, and ambled back toward Doc, trying to emulate a smile. Pale complexion with blue eyes. Black hair, piled and pinned, a thread of her natural red grown out along her scalp. Black mini, braless white peasant top, and black lace-up spikes. Soft through the hips and thighs, like low-slung thick was in her future. Arms lightly freckled. Light acne under her foundation.

Shit, he thought, she’s young.

“Whatcha havin’, sweetie?”

“O’Doul’s, please.”

Seeing him up close, her smile came alive and spread to her eyes. She plumped her hair, leaned in a bit to touch his shoulder, hand lingering for a beat. “Sorry, we don’t have non-alcoholic stuff. I can getcha a pop. They charge as much as a beer though”

“It’s okay,” he said. “I’ll just take a regular Heineken.”

The dancer stepped off the stage with maybe five bucks from the set. The music stopped.

“Be right back. My name’s Abby.”

“Doc.”

“Doc, that’s five dollars.” He put ten in her hand and told her to keep the change. She reluctantly walked away, glancing back twice.

Doc’s attention returned to the brown dancer who’d just walked through an Employees’ Only door in the back. He pulled the phone out of his pocket and texted Deangela. Think poodle is here, on duty. The reply came fast. On my way.

Abby came back with his beer just as Deangela got her stamp. The door guy at least took his nose out of the screen. Abby looked up as Deangela approached.

“Lookin’ for work, baby?”

“I’m with him.” Deangela said, sitting.

Abby threw a poisonous look at them both and stalked away. Didn’t even ask Deangela what she wanted to drink.

“What’s up with that?” Deangela asked.

“I think she was flirtin’ with me.”

Deangela smirked. “And I stepped on her sand castle. Where’s Poodle?”

“If it’s her, she just finished a dance and went in the back.” The music came on again: Def Leppard, Pour Some Sugar on Me. “Music’s shit in here. Wait, here she comes again.”

The dancer mounted the stage. Resumed her anemic moves, unfocused gaze on anywhere but this club.

“How do we find out if that’s her?” he asked.

One guy sat by himself—heavy not fat, fiftyish. Medium-long, curly, salt and pepper hair poking out of a blue and white Michigan-M ball cap. Jeans and a green knit jumper. He rose and intercepted Abby, gripping her possessively by the arm as he spoke into her ear. Doc and Deangela watched closely. Green Sweater was the boss. Not a nice one.

Abby headed back to their table.

“What would you like to drink?” she asked Deangela, her face fallen.

“They don’t have non-alcoholic,” Doc said, looking to Abby with a wan smile as if for some measure of forgiveness.

“Sparkling water,” Deangela said.

Abby left without comment.

“Wait for your girlfriend to come back,” Deangela said. “I have an idea.”

“Her name’s Abby.”

Abby was back in short order. She put Deangela’s Pellegrino down so hard it sounded like a shot over the Def Leppard atrocity. Deangela ignored it, face composed.

“That’s five dollars.”

Deangela pulled two twenties from her wallet.

“Abby, right?”

“What?”

Deangela removed her investigator’s license and a card from her wallet and held it out. Abby took them.

“Is that Poodle?” Deangela nodded toward the stage and passed Abby the twenty.

“Why?” Abby asked, the edge coming off her tone as she studied the license.

Deangela held out her hand for the license. “She may have come into some money. I’m supposed to find her.”

“That said you’re from North Carolina. Poodle ain’t from North Carolina.”

So, it was Poodle onstage.

Green Sweater was alert and out of his chair again. Abby watched him approach with obvious alarm.

“Tell him I showed you ID, for a job,’ Deangela instructed. “Keep the change and the card. Give the card to Poodle. Tell her to call me on the penciled number when she can. Tonight, if possible. On her break.”

“What’s goin’ on?” Green Sweater, the boss.

“Lady here wants to know what we pay.” She tucked the tip and number in her apron. “Her ID’s good.”

“Who’s your boyfriend?” asked Green Sweater.

“Her cousin,” Doc replied.

Green Sweater looked back and forth, settling on Deangela.

“Ever danced before?”

“I can show you now,” she said. Doc looked up at her. “Let me get my stuff outside.” She stood. “Back in two minutes. You can show me the dressing room.” She smiled at Green Sweater. “Watch me change if you like. What’s your name?”

Abby edged away from the conversation.

“Damon Cross.”

“Pleasure to meet you, Damon. Doc, you comin’?”

“Why’s he gotta go?” asked Damon.

“He’s my cousin. Don’t seem right, him watchin’.”

“Wait,” ordered Damon.

“We’ll be right back,” she said, and they hustled out together.

When they were safely outside, Doc said, “We kinda left Abby in a bind.”

“Not ideal, I know.”

50

They sat in Wolf Creek Tavern, a long shot out in the County. Sports bar. A dozen or so country club alkies had watched the Dodgers squeak past the Giants earlier in the evening, and stayed on. Deangela’s phone chittered in her pocket at 11:17 p.m. Doc looked up from his O’Doul’s.

“Hello.”

“This Dana Gela Dale?”

“Deangela, yes. Poodle?”

“Abby says I got some money.”

“Maybe. Can you tell me your legal name?”

“Jamila Barr.”

“Good. It’s definitely you. When do you get off work, Jamila?”

“I’m off now,” she said.

“Is there somewhere we can meet?”

“Right now?”

“If you like.”

“How much money?”

“I’d rather say in person. You have a car?”

“You gimme a ride?” she asked someone else. Then back to Deangela: “Yeah, I can come.”

“Come by Wolf Creek Tavern. Now, if you can.”

“You swear I got some money?”

“On my honor.”

“She wants to meet at Wolf Creek Tavern,” Poodle told whoever was with her. “Know where that’s at?”

In the background, male: “That’s up by the country club. Ten-fifteen minutes.”

“I’ll be there in fifteen minutes,” she told Deangela. “Abby says you’re a sister with a cute Mexican dude?”

“That’s right.” She smiled at Doc.

“Some kinda investigator.”

“Correct.”

“Okay, stay there.” She hung up.

Deangela turned to Doc.

“She’s comin’ here. We’re gonna give her $100. And Abby thinks you’re hot stuff.”

*

October 15, 2021
12:01 p.m.

Poodle was late. Not by much, but Wolf Creek Tavern closed at 1:00 a.m. The sports bar crowd did a double take for the second time that night after Doc and Deangela. Poodle came in wearing a white skirt that barely covered her crotch (thong, red) and a blue-gray jacket made of feathers. Her fiftyish companion was dressed in blue denim jeans, a blue denim shirt, and a blue denim jacket. Textile minimalist. Short, stocky, racially ambiguous. Shaved head. Fu Manchu mustache with a soul patch.

Deangela to Doc, “You get the feeling this is the most melanin this bar’s seen since the last catered event?”

He nodded. “If that skirt was a millimeter shorter, they’d see a lot more than melanin.”

Poodle and Fu Manchu spotted them. Poodle threw a tentative wave. Doc and Deangela both raised a beckoning hand.

“We need to get rid of the guy,” Deangela told Doc quietly, eyes and welcome-face fixed on the approaching duo. Doc got up and pulled a chair back for Poodle. Fu Manchu pulled out his own. Deangela offered her hand first to Fu Manchu.

“Deangela Dale.”

“Darius,” he said.

She held her hand out to Poodle in turn.

“Jamila, nice to meet you,” said Deangela.

Jamila took the proffered hand by the fingertips in the briefest and lightest of contacts.

“Doc.” Hand out.

“Darius,” as if he had to reiterate for each.

“Jamila,” Doc said, putting a note of charm in it. “Pleasure.”

She took Doc’s hand more firmly and smiled.

“Call me Poodle.”

“Poodle it is.”

Deangela made a mental note. Women liked Doc, short stature and all. That combination of clean-cut and healthy with an undercurrent of mournful vulnerability. The long thick lashes helped, too. She turned to Darius.

“Darius, no offense, but I’m a private investigator. My conversation with Poodle has to be confidential. If she wants to share with you later, that’s fine. But for now, Doc’ll buy you a drink and you two can sit at another table. Is that okay?”

“I’m her uncle,” Darius said.

“I understand, but I still need to speak with her alone.”

“Any drink I want?” he asked.

“What would you like?” asked Doc.

“Makers Mark, double.”

“Done.”

Doc led Darius to a table, then crossed to the bar to get the double.

Deangela turned to Poodle.

“Drink?”

“Cosmo.”

“Cosmopolitan,” she called to Doc as he passed, pointing to Poodle. He nodded.

“The money is hundred dollars. I have it with me.”

“A hundred? That’s it?”

“For a two-minute conversation.”

“Long as I ain’t in no trouble.” She tugged down on her skirt. “He your man?”

“Friend,” Deangela said, pulling the two pictures out of her pocket. She unfolded them on the table and twisted them around for Poodle to see. “You know these women?”

Poodle looked up at Deangela, then back at the photocopies, then back up.

“Why?”

“I need to talk with them.”

“Why?”

“Can’t say.”

“You talk to Jace?”

Jace again. “Should I?”

“You do, you don’t mention my name, okay. Jace has a buddy on the force. Untouchable motherfucker.”

“The police force?”

“What other force?”

“Who on the force?”

“Big, diesel Mexican dude. Pete. Somethin’ like that. Scary motherfucker.”

“So, who are the girls?”

“That’s Cricket and Holly, okay. I get my hundred now?”

“Real names? Last names?”

“Cricket’s real name’s Victoria Rose. Holly is Holly. Nelson.”

Doc put Poodle’s cosmo on the table and walked over to give Darius his double.

“He can come back,” said Deangela. She pulled five twenties out of her wallet and passed them across to Poodle. Poodle stuffed them into a little pink purse on a long strap. “You can tell your uncle it was a dead end. We’re looking for Doc’s sister, and you don’t know her. Okay?”

“Sure.”

“Y’all can stay and finish your drinks.” Doc and Darius returned. “Doc and I gotta go. Thanks, Poodle.”

When they were inside the car, Deangela pulled her notebook out of the glove box.

“Victoria Rose, that’s Cricket. The other woman is a Holly Nelson. Good work, partner.”

“Thanks. I’m exhausted.”

“That’s why we’re going home. I’ll drop you.”

51

Skegum, Michigan
October 15, 2021

“Where’d they go last night?” asked McInnery. They sat in Haldane’s room.

Haldane peered at the laptop.

“All over the place. Fuckin’ bars.”

“Which ones?”

“The bars?”

“No, the people. Felix? Halfrica?”

“Fuck should I know. The car. The trackers are on the car. Coulda been your mom with her nigger boyfriend.”

“Or your wife with her girlfriend.”

“I fuckin’ wish.”

“Where are they now?”

“Boonies, north of here, by some lake.”

“Shall we go to this lake?”

“Let’s get some breakfast first.”

*

Clark Lake, Michigan

Deangela looked at her watch. 9:30 a.m.

“Ah, geez.”

She whipped off the bedclothes. The bunk was surprisingly comfortable. She’d have liked to lay in longer.

After dropping Doc at home last night, she’d retrieved Felix from the hospital. Milo was awake and demanded she put him on a plane. He’d threatened leave the hospital “against medical advice” if necessary. An argument ensued, but they agreed to table it until he heard from the physicians later today. It was going on 3:00 a.m. when she tucked Felix in and crashed herself.

Felix was still snoring in the other bunkroom. She pulled on yesterday’s clothes, washed her face in the little bathroom, looked suddenly up at the mirror and had her morning epiphany.

“Damn,” she whispered.

The back door creaked. She winced as she crept it open, trying not to wake Felix. Outside, a small enclosed porch with two deck chairs, screens, and a set of steps. The screen door squeaked, too. She eased it back so it wouldn’t slam. The sky was overcast, the dew nearly frozen. Fallen leaves covered the ground. Dazzling trees were mirrored in the lake. Her knees got wet inspecting the Santa Fe’s undercarriage.

There it was, in the left-rear wheel well.

She detached the tracking device, unlocked the car, and placed it in the front passenger seat. The drive to Brooklyn—Michigan, not New York—was less than fifteen minutes.

Polly’s Country Market grocery was fronted with Halloween décor—cotton-bat spider’s webs, pumpkins, potted mums for sale, and bundled sheafs of dry corn stalks. Five other cars in the parking lot. She checked license plates on the way in.

She carried out a dozen eggs, a loaf of grainy bread, a half-gallon of milk, a pound of butter, a quart of orange juice, a small jar of local raw honey, and a half pound of thick-cut local bacon. After arranging her groceries on the floor of the back seat, she attached the tracker to a travel van with Minnesota plates.

“Follow that, assholes.”

*

The smell of coffee and frying bacon pulled Felix out of his dreams and into the kitchenette.

“What’s this?”

Deangela turned sizzling strips of bacon in the skillet. There were four pieces of buttered toast on a saucer next to the stove, a plate with a stack of fried bacon on paper towels, and a bowl of whipped eggs with the fork still in it. The drip percolator pot was full. The rose-pattern apron came with the Airbnb. She wore it over fresh dry jeans and baggy white t-shirt, hair still damp from the shower.

“Breakfast. Have a seat. I’ll get you some coffee.”

“Wow,” he said, squeezing past her to sit in the booth. The table was laid with two settings, two glasses of orange juice, two glasses of water, and the jar of honey.

The room was warm on top and cold by his feet.

“Time is it?” he asked.

She consulted her watch.

“Eleven oh seven.”

“Brunch then. What’s the plan.”

She set a cup of coffee in front of him.

“Get this in you, we’ll talk about it. Milk?”

She took the milk out of the minifridge.

“Thanks. God, I slept like a rock.”

“It’s the crickets.”

“I guess.” He gazed sleepily into his cup and poured a thread of milk into the coffee. It ballooned into blowzy bronze clouds. He took a grateful pull on the coffee. Deangela laid the last three strips of bacon on the stack.

A vehicle pulled in. They looked out the window. Doc’s Deconstruction truck. Felix got up to let him in.

Doc wiped his feet inside the door.

“Coffee?” she offered.

“God, yes. Pretty out here.”

His eyes were swollen. He’d nicked his chin shaving. He slid into the booth across from Felix. Deangela set a steaming cup in front of him.

“How’s Milo?” Doc asked.

Felix and Deangela started to answer at once, then Felix deferred.

“He wants to leave and fly back to Durham.”

“They releasing him?”

“Not yet,” she replied, “but he’s threatening to go AMA.”

“Bad idea. Really an extremely bad idea.”

Felix gave that a nod. Deangela dropped two more slices of bread in the toaster and cracked two more eggs into the bowl.

Doc looked at Felix. “How are you?”

“Much better since we checked out of the Roach Note Motel,” Felix said.

“De tell ya about the women?”

“She’s makin’ me drink my coffee first.”

“We have names,” she said, pouring most of the hot bacon grease into a ceramic cup. “Cricket’s Victoria Rose, and the other one’s Holly Nelson.”

“Dog house girls?”

“The same.” The eggs crackled when they hit the hot skillet. “Also, I removed a tracker from the car this morning.”

“What!” Both men at once.

“They’re probably outside somewhere right now,” said Felix.

“Unless they’re following a seventy-year-old van-life couple back to Minnesota.”

“That fool ’em, ya think?” said Felix.

“If they’re here,” she said, stirring eggs in the skillet, “they’re here. Nothing we can do.”

Felix and Doc leaned to peer out the windows. The toaster popped. She buttered the slices and set Doc out an OJ and a glass of water.

“Pack up this morning,” she said. “Head into Skegum. We travel together.” Divided the eggs between three plates. “Find Rose and Nelson. Ditch the Santa Fe. Check in somewhere else this afternoon.”

She set three plates with bacon, scrambled eggs, and buttered toast on the table.

“Scoot,” she said to Doc and sidled in beside him.

“We need a gun?” asked Felix.

“I don’t do guns,” she said, more abruptly than she meant to. “You want guns, hire another investigator. Guns make people stupid.” (Milo rule.)

“Okay,” conceded Felix. Doc nodded.

Deangela drizzled honey on her toast. That was the signal for everyone to dig in.

“Doc,” she said.

“Yeah.” He bit into a strip of bacon.

“I have a proposal. You can say no.”

“To marry you?” he smiled.

“Somethin’ even scarier,” she said.

*

On the way to Skegum, they bought a cheap Styrofoam cooler with a bag of ice for the leftover groceries. The car was packed with four people’s luggage (Milo’s included) stuffed into the trunk and back seat. Doc followed in his totally obvious truck. Felix agreed to put Doc on temporary payroll. Doc, who’d taken a bit of convincing, had put a job on hold and lost some future work.

52

Mason, Michigan
October 15, 2021

Haldane drove. McInnery dealt with the phone.

“You’re where?” said Farrell.

“North of Jackson. Place called Mason.” said McInnery. “They stopped at a grocery store two hours ago, and drove north up one-twenty-seven.”

“Fuck they doin’?”

“Not sure. We tagged them in Monroe. They shuttled some rental cars in Ann Arbor, then went back to Monroe. Looks like the old man’s out of action. Yesterday, they went to the lake, then some bars last night, then back to the lake. The whole thing seems random. Isn’t Sharpe too sick to drink?”

“It’s not fuckin’ random, you dickheads! They’re ditchin’ the old man and doin’ a Charlie-Mike. We just don’t know what the deal is with the fuckin’ cop. Somethin’s not right here. If they aren’t coordinatin’ with him, they’re surveillin’ him.”

“Or assessing him.”

“What-the-fuck-ever. So, they go to the lake, then they get groceries, then they take off north?”

“Apparently.”

“Why would they get groceries?”

‘Maybe they didn’t. It was a grocery store, but it sells other things.”

“Ain’t a fuckin’ thing north of Jackson,” railed Farrell. “Break contact, and get back to the lake. See what the fuck’s there. Five gets you ten, they unloaded the tracker on an Amazon delivery truck or some shit.”

“Fuck,” yelled Haldane in the background.

“You don’t find ’em, you get back on Correa,” ordered Farrell. “and stick to that motherfucker like marshmallow fluff.”

*

Milo’s right hand was rebellious. He held the phone against his thigh with it and dialed Renee with his left.

“Who’s this?”

“Elvin.”

“Elvin! Hey, hon! Hey, look, I’m sorry about that thing at Big Boy.”

“It’s nothin’,” Milo said. “You at work?”

“Kinda sorta. I clean houses. Money under the table, don’t tell anyone.”

“You want some more money under that table?”

*

Madison, Michigan

“It’s a one-two punch,” said Felix.

“Exactly,” said Deangela.

“Yeah, but I could be one of the punchees,” said Doc.

“True,” said Deangela. “You not wanna do it?”

“Still thinkin’.”

Almost three o’clock. They sat in the car with the windows cracked in front of Shoe Carnival, Marshalls, and a Great Clips hair place just out of Skegum.

“How would I do it?” Doc asked.

“We catch Petey at a stop,” she said. “Follow until he takes a break, coffee, food, whatever. Call you in with your truck. You pull in, [air quotes] recognize him, and go all hail fellow well met.”

“What’s that mean?”

“Like, holy-shit-man-small-world-what-a-trip-seeing-ya-how-ya-doin’ kinda thing.”

“So, I’m not trying to get any information?”

“No, play it loose. Natural. The point’s for you to see him and him see you.”

“Why?”

“Throw him off balance. Then we shoot a message to Senator Theiner.”

“The one he’s seein’?”

“Yep. Tell her that her boy’s a drug dealer and pet pornographer. Let her know that we know about the affair.”

“You think this’ll throw ’im off?” asked Felix.

“His father,” she answered. They both gave her a questioning look. “He’s smart, no doubt, but it’s not the [air quotes] enterprises that matter. A good crook, he’d cover his ass, cut his losses, drop out of sight, and start again fresh someway. That’s not Petey. He wants what Daddy had.”

“What?” Felix asked.

“He wants to be the ringmaster.” Here eyes went back and forth to them both. “So, we mess with his circus. Make him react.”

“How sure are you about this?” asked Felix.

“Kind of sure,” she admitted.

“That’s him,” said Doc. He pursed his lips, clasping his hands in front of him like he was trying to squeeze juice out of dry fruit. “I’ll do it. When?”

“Go home,” she said. “You’ve done great. I’ll call.”

“I’m worried about you guys.”

“Appreciate it, Doc, but we’ll be okay. I’ll definitely call. I need to get a line on Jace Valnicek and the two women first. Flesh out the story.”

“She’s right,” said Felix. They sat silent for a moment. “Sorry we sprang so much shit on you,” he said to Doc. “What I saw in Afghanistan, you may’ve been the only non-culpable member left alive on that team.”

*

Correa had no idea what Gildy told her husband about their liaisons. He didn’t care. She was about two pages down on his to-do list right now. He texted her on the fuck-phone and told her he had to work an extra shift.

She sent back a sad-emoji. Bitch was in heat.

He’d called again this morning on the rentals. The Accord was turned in. He’d be on the lookout now for the Santa Fe.

He’d wrung out his head trying to visualize some plausible scenario that put Major No-Name and the Dale chick in Skegum together asking around about Xander. He’d done an internet search. She was definitely that whacked-out team sergeant’s daughter. Google confirmd his fellow patrolmen. She was a photographer and a private investigator. But with Major No-Name? And the prehistoric dude? Maybe her boss from Durham? Now, they were on the Chadbourn studio and Xander. And Xander could lead back to the Freebooters. Still, Major No-Name? This made zero fucking sense. How did Afghanistan connect to Skegum?

He took a call for a fender-bender out on Bee Highway and Scott.

As he rounded the first turn, the silver van five cars back pulled out behind him.

53

Skegum, Michigan
October 16, 2021

Someone was banging the motel door. Felix woke with a start and checked his phone: 6:07 a.m. The door banged again.

“Comin’, fuck,” he growled. He pulled on his jeans and answered the door.

Deangela swept in without so much as a good morning.

“Milo’s gone,” she said.

“What?” He rubbed at his face like he was cleaning a window.

“Gone.”

“Where? How?”

“Hell if I know. Somehow or another he just disappeared . . . Sorry, how’re you?”

“I need coffee. How’d an eighty-one-year-old man who just had a stroke disappear from the hospital?”

“You said those guys couldn’t get to him there.”

“Slip in and inject shit into his IV or something? Remotely possible. Make him disappear altogether? That’s not it. He said he wanted to leave.”

“Shit! How?”

“An accomplice? He doesn’t have a car.”

They’d checked in to the Larkton the afternoon prior and spoken with Milo a few minutes afterward. He did sound, apart from the slight slur in his speech, particularly chipper.

“Let’s get that coffee,” she said. “How long you need?”

“Gimme twenty minutes.”

*

The Galley was out on 223. The restaurant shared a building with a second-hand fishing tackle place in front of a boarded-up strip mall with a vast empty potholed parking lot. The only cars were clustered at The Galley. The pandemic had been retail havoc.

The place was busy . . . for 6:55 a.m. on a Saturday. Volume outfit with three large rooms and a small banquet facility in the back. The front room buzzed with caffeinated early risers. Family of travelers. Half-dozen construction workers chasing overtime. Two truckers. Two couples together who looked like they’d pulled an all-nighter and needed a crash-breakfast. The wait staff was two bustling white women, the cook staff two dispirited Latinos. An older woman who looked like a televangelist’s wife worked the register. The generously rounded off breakfast plates trailed steam behind the waitresses.

Deangela’s burner went off in her pocket as one waitress set water in front of them and asked if they wanted coffee.

“Yes, please,” they both said at once.

“Just a minute,” said Deangela. She read the text. Her eyes grew large. She gave Felix a look.

“I can come back in a minute, hon,” the waitress said. Pushing fifty, husky in a way that said strong. Pale brown hair in a thick braid. One of her eyes appeared to be fixed, a prosthetic, and a scar ran across her cheek and lip. She clocked Felix’s scar, only for an instant, and there was a nanosecond of something between them. Wound survivors.

“Thanks,” said Felix. The waitress sailed away with a smile. He turned to Deangela. “What?”

“You’re not gonna believe it.”

“I can believe pretty much anything, but go ahead.”

“That was Mama. Milo just called. He’s at RDU.”

“The airport? In Raleigh?”

“No shit. I mean just . . . how?”

“Crafty old bastard, I’ll give him that.”

“She’s gonna try and get Cedar to pick him up.”

Felix shook his head and smiled. She stared at him for a moment and smiled herself.

“You hungry,” he asked. “Looks like they don’t skimp on portions.”

“I am,” she said. “Feels like a sausage, eggs, pancakes, and home fries kinda day.”

He looked at this lean, little woman. “Your metabolism is a fusion reactor.”

*

Is this what love is all about?
Am I gettin’ in too deep?
Wouldn’t wanna freak you out
Make a promise I cannot keep

Toby Kieth wailed on the radio. Haldane was behind the wheel. McInnery laid across the van’s second seat with his knees up and a duffel for a pillow.

“Halfrica and Felix are back,” called Haldane.

McInnery sat up and looked out the side window as the Santa Fe pulled into the Larkton Lodge parking lot.

Sharpe, that dumb motherfucker, had used his credit card to get two rooms there after Halfrica had pulled her little stunt with the tracker. (They weren’t forgetting that.)

*

Victoria “Cricket” Rose was twenty-nine years old. Born in Toledo. Married at eighteen, divorced at nineteen. Arrested in May 2017 the first time—four years ago—at a rave that was raided at a Fox County “farm.” Then the arrests cascaded: July 2017—possession (meth), rehab/probation, March 2018—possession (meth again), rehab/probation, December 2018—distribution (yet again, meth), one year in County.

(Deangela didn’t know about Michigan, but in North Carolina, County time was hard time.)

Out since January 2020. New way to feed the habit on the down-low—zoo porn. Something happened just over four years ago that took her from employed divorcee (school counselor, no shit!) to meth head. MDMA as a gateway. Deangela’s money was on a man. Relationships again. Yay, get me one of those along with a big delicious glass of Drain-O. Last arrest, soliciting, no prosecution.

Holly Nelson was twenty-five. Born at home in Petersburg, Michigan, not far from Dundee. Never married. Sealed juvie record somewhere, given that her first listed arrest was less than a week after her eighteenth birthday. Petty theft, compounded with marijuana possession, pre-legalization obviously. (Deangela flickered uneasily on the ubiquitous pot shops along M-54.) Heroin possession with resisting arrest, suspended sentence on condition of rehabilitation with a year of unannounced drug screens. Solicitation arrest, no prosecution . . . Solicitation, no prosecution. Again. Deangela smelled an accommodating cop. She had a pretty good idea of that cop’s name.

On to Jace Valnicek.

Oh, this guy was special. Forty-five years old. Not a bad looking guy from what pictures were available and the glimpse she’d caught at the porn house. Six-footer, thick and naturally strong, blue eyes, clean shaven, wore his wavy copper hair on the long side. Nine years in nearby Gilbert Harrison for a third-degree sexual offense, i.e., raping his girlfriend with a baseball bat after they’d taken LSD. So, how does this guy afford a pimped-out pickup? Deangela’s guess: partnership with a patrolman. He had two properties on record. A semi-rural residence by the prison. And an inoperable farm, by the looks of it, just across the line in Lenawee County.

Sidesaddle on the hotel bed, she typed the information into a research document. Big “no” on interviewing Jace Valnicek. Leave his big, rapey ass to the authorities.

Address for Cricket: 811-A South Raisin Street, half of a two-story duplex.

Address for Holly: 811-B South Raisin.

“Whoa!” she blurted. The plot thickened.

Deangela calculated a probable price range for what appeared to be a good quality apartment duet within walking distance of downtown along a stretch where they kept the potholes repaired and the street cleared of road kill.

Employment for Cricket: Consultant, Bagley-Fabiszac Insurance and Realtors.

Employment for Holly: Shit! Consultant, Bagley-Fabiszac Insurance and Realtors.

“And I’m a Japanese fighter pilot,” she said to the room. These women weren’t employed; they were owned.

Bagley. She’d seen that name when she did preliminaries.

Bagley, she typed in, Skegum.

Jason Bagley, Fox County’s Sheriff, half-brother of . . . Ralph Fabiszac. Dayam!

She put on her shoes, walked two doors down, and rapped on Felix’s door. He opened and let her through.

“You see ’em?” she asked.

“Who?”

“Your buddies. The Farrell twins. They were here when we came back from breakfast.”

“Where?”

“Parking lot. Out there now.” Felix gave her a look. “Come on, Boss, we knew once you used your card, they’d be on us like a duck on a June bug. It’s the silver van.”

“Missed that. Why didn’t you say?”

‘Just did. Pulled the background on our girls. Think I got a plan, but first we gotta lose your boys. One’s a fireplug. Bald. Cop mustache. Other guy’s blonde. No neck. Enough hair product to bounce a bullet.”

“So, what’s your plan?”

“Pack.”

They staged their luggage in the lobby and checked out. The deadly duo’s van was on the south side, covering the front entrance on the east and the back exit to the west. Deangela had parked on the south side around fifteen yards east of the twins. She went out the front, bold as brass, and marched to the car.

“There she is,” said McInnery to Haldane.

She pulled out and headed West on 223, then hooked a ninety-degree left between a hoagie shop and Marathon station. The silver van had just pulled out onto the highway when she took the turn. An eye specialist office and a physical therapy outfit shared a building on her right, with an island of three enormous tri-color willow-shrubs in the parking lot next to the street. She whipped right and tucked in behind the shrubs.

“Where the fuck,” said Haldane when they turned left. She’d disappeared. McInnery peered right and left as they slowed. Then he looked in the side mirror. The Santa Fe pulled out behind them from a parking lot.

“There she went,” said McInnery. “She did a one-eighty on us. She’s bucking. We’re burned.”

“Farrell said stay with ’em.”

Haldane pulled into a nursing home and whipped through the two-entry parking lot, drawing a shout from one car they almost hit as it backed out. Haldane caught the tail of the Santa Fe heading back east on the highway. He cursed an elderly couple who pulled out of the eye clinic in front of them and crawled forward to the stop sign.

“Get outa the fuckin’ way,” shouted Haldane, as if.

Deangela pulled into the drive-through entryway in front of the Larkton and hit open on the locks. Felix popped the back door, pitched the luggage in off a hotel cart, slammed the door, and jumped into the passenger seat. Deangela gunned it around to the back of the hotel where they stopped and waited.

“Where the fuck . . .” Haldane was turning red. He jammed the accelerator on 223 along a long easy turn toward the southeast.

“Wait,” said McInnery. “She didn’t have Sharpe.”

“Goddamnit!” Haldane pulled onto the shoulder. No turnbacks on the divided highway for at least half a mile. He threw it into reverse and backed down the shoulder against traffic at a velocity that made McInnery reach for the dash and grab-handle. A tractor-trailer truck leaned on the horn as it swept past inches from the driver’s side.

Deangela headed east on the highway along the left lane. She took a median U-turn to flip back to the west, then a hundred yards down, she whipped a tight right onto Raisin Street.

“She’s behind us,” grunted Haldane.

“Fuck me!” said McInnery about Haldane’s driving, still death-gripping the handle and dash.

“She’s turnin’.” Haldane braked and threw it into drive, punching a U-turn on the open highway and driving along the shoulder, face first now, into traffic. He whipped right onto the median turn as the Santa Fe disappeared behind a motel and library along Raisin.

“Fucking lunatic!” McInnery yelled at him, but at least they were driving with traffic again.

Deangela took a left into a parking lot between a Jimmy John’s, an apartment complex, and a Methodist church, then right on Spruce Street. Residential. Left on Washington, right onto Concord—retired-teachers tract housing that ended in a junction with Auburn—same neighborhood—which fed them onto Scordia, a north-south thoroughfare.

She paused at a stop sign.

“I think that did it,” she said, smiling over at Felix.

“Very exciting,” said Felix.

Gazing around, he took in the peace of lawn-Nazi regimentation and middle-income ennui.

“Cocksucker, motherfucker!” shouted Haldane, as they pulled into an Ace Hardware lot. McInnery, hands still shaking, took a container of peppermint Altoids out of his pocket and popped two in his mouth.

54

Knowing that many “consultants” work from home, Deangela knocked on Cricket’s door even though it wasn’t yet two in the afternoon.

“Who is it?” Woman’s voice.

“Deangela Dale.”

“Who?” The door cracked, revealing a round face, pretty without makeup in spite of the red sclera of those wide-set green eyes. Black hair rolled into a pencil bun. Baked as blueberry muffin.

Deangela had her investigator’s license up.

“Deangela Dale. I’m a private investigator. Cricket, right? May I speak with you?”

“Don’t think so,” Cricket sang, closing the door.

“Chadbourn Street. Interrupted film session. I can speak with someone else if you like.”

The door re-opened. Deangela held up one of the pictures.

“Fuck,” said Cricket. Looked as if she was about to hyperventilate. “Come in quick, ya crazy fuckin’ bitch.”

Deangela, at five-four, still had two inches on Cricket, but Cricket was pugnaciously faced off. Terrified, trying to get her bluff in. “Was that you? Outside the other night?”

“It was.”

Cricket made a noise like a whale song, folded her arms across her chest, and began pacing in circles. Deangela gave her some space. Looked around.

The apartment was a wreck, stinking of cigarettes, cannabis, and rubbish. Fat trash bags. Clothes in heaps. Half a case of bottled water in the middle of the floor. A floor fan on its side. Dirty paper plates. Sink piled in what looked like medical waste. Bedclothes in a wad. Discarded drink cans around the room like map pins on insanity.

Cricket was clothed in some kind of pink workout gear with a seam that ran intentionally up the crack of her ass. (Why?)

“You need to get the fuck out of Michigan.” Stopped to pick up a pack of Marlboros. Lit one. “People here gonna feed you to the fish.”

“What people?” asked Deangela, voice calm and measured in the hope she could calm this obviously frantic and—now that she saw her—extremely vulnerable young woman.

“People,” Cricket said, hands flying out. She grunted four times in succession, reversing her circles.

“Take a breath,” said Deangela. Cricket slowed and stopped. “I mean you no harm. Just wanna ask a few questions.”

“Oh, fuck!” she shrieked. Deangela flinched. Cricket resumed the chained-elephant dance, hands over her ears like she was shielding herself from an explosion, trailing cigarette smoke that made it look like her head was on fire. Deangela put out a tentative hand. Testing Cricket’s shoulder recoil. Cricket stopped.

Her eyes rolled and she seemed to crumble, knees buckling, dropping the cigarette. Deangela caught her and lifted. Cricket pulled her into an embrace, sobbing into Deangela’s breast, “I’m ashamed!”

Just as quickly, Cricket rallied and pulled away, giving Deangela her back. Deangela picked up the burning cigarette. Dropped it in one of the empty cans.

Cricket whipped around. “Who else knows you’re here, knows about . . .” pointing to the folded picture in Deangela’s hand, “. . . this?”

“Please, sit. Please.” Cricket stared like Deangela was speaking a dead language. “Please, Cricket. Sit for me.” Cricket finally dropped onto the sofa between a pile of clothes and a filthy pillow. “Anything I can get you? Something to drink, maybe?”

“Beer. In the fridge.”

Deangela went to fetch it, stepping around an inexplicable stack of collapsed cardboard boxes and a clothes hamper, the latter filled with magazines, an irregular collection of framed pictures, two blue stuffed monkeys, and a red peekaboo bra.

Cricket took the bottle of Michelob, twisted off the cap, and flipped it into a pile of food trash on what Deanglea presumed was a coffee table. Deangela sat down on a black banquet chair that had been somehow separated from its herd. Cricket took a long pull on the beer and caught her breath with a suppressed sob.

“No one needs to know I’m here,” said Deangela. “I’m not investigating you. I won’t betray your confidence if you talk with me.”

“Talk about what? Who you investigatin’”

“More like what I’m investigating, but lemme say I’m not here to judge you or shame you or expose you. What I saw, what happened at that house, is something I doubt you chose.” That provoked a fresh round of hiccups, whimpers, and tears. “I suspect, and you can help me with this, that a policeman’s involved in this.”

“Jesus Christ, you can’t . . . oh my God . . . fuck—”

“He’ll never know we’ve spoken. It’s Pedro Correa, isn’t it?”

“Pete,” she corrected before she thought. “Shit, I’m—”

“And Jace Valnicek.”

“Whatcha need me for, ya know all this shit?”

“How’d you come into contact with Correa?”

Cricket wiped her eyes and nose with a used paper towel from the coffee table. Crumpled it in her hand. Lit another smoke and sat it on the edge of the table.

“I’m not usin’ anymore,” she said. Deangela cocked her head at this seemingly random remark, looking at the beer in Cricket’s hand and the roaches in an ashtray. “I mean the meth. I’m off that. I mean, that’s how we, Pete, Holly . . . oh shit—”

“Next door, I know.”

“Okay, that’s how . . . I mean, when I’m on the gak, it gets pretty bad, so one night I get talked into sellin’ pussy, ya know, and, my fuckin’ luck, I solicit a snitch. Pete, he arrests me. You can not tell anyone!” Listing to panic again. Deangela crossed her heart. Cricket picked up the nearly empty pack and lit another smoke while the other smoldered on the edge of the table. She exhaled a cloud of smoke at the floor. “Pete says, like ‘I’m Pete,” all friendly like, and like he was my friend, and he could cancel the arrest or whatever if I agreed to be his confidential informant.”

“He made you a CI?”

“Yeah, like I’m registered and all that. Pete says so anyway. Holly and me both. He got her for solicitation, too.” Confirmation. “But he’s not like a friendly guy. He drives me out to a lake one day, and I’m thinking okay he wants to fuck or somethin’. But we get there, he asks me, do I remember when they pulled three bodies out of that lake? I don’t, but I say yes, cuz this motherfucker’s coming across now with a psycho vibe, and he like tells me he put them there, the bodies. He don’t tell me he’ll put me there, but I get the picture, right. So, couple days later, he tells me he has a job, a payin’ job, workin’ a party.”

“A party?”

“Yeah, but it’s not waitin’ or caterin’ or somethin’ like that, it’s whorin’. He wants me to go and work a bunch of rich dudes out at the country club.”

“Fox Hills Country Club?”

“Yeah, only Pete, he ain’t there. He works this shit behind the scenes, see. Brings Holly in on that shit, too. Anyway, he says we can make a thousand a night, so there’s the money here.” She held one hand out to the side. “And the bodies in the lake, here.” She held out the other hand. “Like a carrot and stick kinda thing. So, we do it, like I did three of ’em—”

“Parties?”

“Yeah, and Holly did two. With me anyhow. Couple more, maybe, I dunno, but like Pete won’t make you work when you’re on your period, so. Small fuckin’ blessings. Anyhow, before the first party, he walks the girls around—”

“Other girls?”

“Oh, yeah, sometimes seven or eight girls at each party, doin’ all kinds of shit. One-on-one, threesomes, gang bangs, you name it. Coupla boys, too, for the fags. But he walks us around before the parties start, when the clubhouse is empty ’cept for us, and he points to all these cameras you can’t see.”

“Cameras?”

“Cameras, yeah, a lot of them, hidin’ all through the place, and he says, keep the men in front of the cameras. ’Specially when they’re doin’ sex stuff. Pete’s got a camera expert, Cijay Nash, does the cameras for the porn, too.”

“So, he’s filming them? All of them?”

“He’s fucking blackmailin’ ’em! All of ’em! Like some of the most important dudes in Skegum. We dope the fuckers with GHB. Later, we give ’em some X if they like. All they remember is they had a good time and wanna do it again, because, whee!, Pete’s pussy parties, right, but somewhere Pete’s got the vids, so now he’s got Skegum’s top dogs on leashes.”

“Wow. A police patrolman. So, what about . . . the other night?”

“The dogs, you mean.” She looked away and held up her hand for a second like she was shielding the paparazzi.

“Yes.”

“Five hundred bucks a shoot, but he makes ten times that selling the footage to private customers and puttin’ it on the internet.”

“And Valnicek?”

Cricket’s eyes got big.

“That motherfucker! Works for Pete, too. The dogs are Jace’s, and he’s got ’em trained to do girls. Guy’s not right in the fuckin’ head.”

“What do you mean?”

“He’s scary, for one thing. He looks at you, you can tell there’s a screw loose.” She leaned in and locked Deangela’s eyes. “He fluffs the dogs and beats off while we shoot.”

“Fluffs?”

‘He does oral sex with the dogs before the shoots. To get ’em hard.” Deangela was speechless. She longed for the Shamrock, for stalking birds with her dad in Weymouth Woods, for lost childhood, for the latest episode of My Little Pony. For a joint. “Guy was in prison for rapin’ a chick with a baseball bat. Everybody ’round here knows about it. He’s crazy as a shithouse rat!”

“How’d he come to work for Pedro, for Pete?”

“Way everybody does. Pete’s got somethin’ on him.” One hand up, cigarette between her fingers. “Stick.” Other hand up. “And Jace gets paid. Carrot. All of us get paid for sellin’, too.”

“Selling?”

“You swear you won’t tell anybody you talked to me?”

She wanted to talk. The more she talked, the more she relaxed, like someone dropping a heavy suitcase. Or a dead body.

“I promise. Selling . . . drugs?”

“Gak, yeah. GHB and X, too. Pete got his own cook—”

“Xander?”

“Damn, you know a lot, bitch. Why you need me?”

“I do. Go on.”

“I sell. Holly sells. Jace sells. I think Xander sells at the prison, you know about that, too?”

“I suspected.”

“He got dealers all over town. But Pete never touches anything hisself. He just has shit on people.”

“Like Jeffrey Epstein.”

“Who?”

“Never mind. So, he never connects with his actual . . . enterprises.”

“Ha! Right. Even the parties. He’s never actually there. Except to brief the girls before. Even then he goes all like a secret fuckin’ agent. Different cars, back doors, gloves-and-hoodie and shit.”

“Who came to these parties?”

“The Mayor.”

“The Mayor?” Deangela felt an insect ascend through the middle of her spine.

“Oh, yeah. Coupla Councilmen. Some guys on the County Commission. School Board Director. The Sheriff’s brother—”

“The Sheriff’s brother?”

“Yeah, Ralph.”

“Fabiszac.”

“Yep.” She rolled her eyes.

“You’re listed as a consultant with Bagley-Fabiszac.”

“Oh, that.” She gave a weak laugh. “Yeah, that’s Pete’s idea. He pays us a little for that, too, like three hundred a month each for doin’ nothin’, but it goes on Ralph’s books as like five grand. Only time we ever seen Ralph, he was doped up and face deep in some black pussy. Sorry.”

“It’s okay. Wasn’t mine.” Cricket almost smiled. “So, Ralph was at all the parties?”

“I saw him at two of ’em.”

“Did you—”

“Oh, no! No, Ralph only likes black chicks. And only oral. Him and her. Fuckin’ freak, like all those [air quotes] respectable motherfuckers.”

Deangela recalled Ralph’s creepy leer in the parking lot.

“You know Poodle, I assume.”

“Yeah, Poodle and me go back.”

“Poodle work any parties?”

“Naw, she don’t do that. We were meth buds, but she never did the other stuff. She’s dancin’ now. Stayin’ with some sketchy uncle who, my opinion, is dippin’ into that sometimes. Now, he may be sellin’, I dunno. Has some money someway. She knows I work with Jace and Pete, but I don’t give her details. They don’t let us use the gak cuz we deal. Poodle, she’s still on the gak. I sell to her. We bullshit about the old days sometimes, but she’s on the outside, get what I mean?”

“How about Xander? Who’s he hand off to? And where’s his [air quotes] kitchen?”

“Xander? I don’t know. My guess, it’s Jace. Like I said, Pete’s strictly hands-off, so Jace’d make sense. Jace is mostly a carrot guy, not a stick. Pete pays Jace, so there’s money, see, but Jace also gets his fuckin’ pervy fuckin’ freak on, so Jace, he’s, what’s the word . . . like, willin’. Enthusiastic, that’s it. Jace is enthusiastic. Pete ain’t gotta threaten Jace. Jace shows up for this shit in his Sunday underwear.”

“The lab?”

“That I can’t say. Top secret. Could be any-fuckin-where. Everybody says Xander’s a really good cook. Like first rate. Like he cooks without making smells and messes and fires and shit. And he don’t use neither. Never has, what I hear.”

Deangela stood and reached for her back pocket, remembering that Cricket was once a school counselor.

“You leavin’” asked Cricket, now almost disappointed.

“I appreciate your time,” said Deangela, taking a hundred from her wallet and handing it to Cricket. “Gotta go, and, on my honor, this conversation never gets back to Pete or Jace, okay.”

55

“Cedar.” Deangela drove with an earpiece.

“What the hell? Where have you been?”

“Still in Michigan. Look, I need a favor.”

“De, I’ve been worried sick.”

“I’m sorry, it’s moving fast here.”

“What favor?”

“I need you to book two hotel rooms for two days at the Hampton Inn in Adrian, Michigan. Near Skegum, where I am. Put ’em on your card, and we’ll pay you back. Say the people—”

“Slow down, De. Hampton Inn, Adrian . . .”

“Sorry. Give them my name and Felix Sharpe, with an E.”

“What’s goin’ on?”

“They’re tracking our credit cards, I think.”

“Who? Who the hell can track credit cards, De?”

“The government. They’re lo-jackin’ us.”

“They’re what?”

“Surveillance without court orders.”

“Is that legal?”

“Prob’ly not, but Client says they’re some kind of extra-legal polyp in the large intestine of the DOD.”

“Got an image, you gross little hiefer. I’m scared for you, De.” Deangela’s chin quivered. She fought tears. “De, you there?”

“Yeah,” she said. “I miss you and Mama.”

“You don’t sound right.”

The tears broke.

“I’m running, pal. And I’m tired. And I need to sit down and tell you all this shit I’m hearing about my dad. But then, I’m running, and I think I have to run hard right out of whatever this is before I can stop.”

“Oh, woman, don’t cry.”

“Look,” Deangela said, sucking it together, “at some point in the next few days, I’m gonna send something to someone in Raleigh, if she’ll do a thing for me. I need your help.”

“What? What is it?”

“It’s a story, Cedar. For the media. We gotta finish it first, but we need a couple degrees separation between the storyteller and publication.”

“Government shit.”

“Government shit.” Deangela pulled into a parallel parking space across from the city library. “Hey, amiga, I gotta go. You got me?”

“Always gotcha. Love you.”

“Love ya back.” Deangela took the earpiece out, pocketed her phone. Felix came out of the library and waved.

*

Adrian, Michigan

The new hotel was nested along an unbecoming business zone that had stayed alive through the pandemic by clustering near the intersection of 223 and Highway 52 where it caught commercial and inter-town commuter traffic. Box stores, chain restaurants, auto dealerships, oil change joints, corporate gyms, gas stations, car washes, and a surfeit of recreational marijuana stores.

As soon as they’d checked in, Deangela went to Felix’s room.

“Time to rattle a bush or two,” she said.

“How ya gonna do that?”

“Leave a text for Xander McKenzie, then we’ll put the tail back on Petey.”

“Need me to go?”

“Sure, if you’re up to it.”

“Up like gas prices.”

*

Skegum, Michigan

Is there glass in your ass/Do the cells have bells/Cop cop in a donut shop/Mister’s sister needs a twister. Xander McKenzie stared at his phone screen. Unknown number. Heart banging like a gavel, he texted Pete Correa.

*

Adrian, Michigan

Deangela amused herself with the ridiculous rhyme. She sat at the desk in Felix’s room and snickered. I’m losing it, she thought. Felix looked at her from the bed.

“What?” He smiled in spite of having no idea.

“Sorry. Just having a silly moment.”

She showed him the text. He chuckled.

“Silly enough, but what’s it mean?”

“Glass and twister, meth names. Cells, prison. Cops, Petey. Messin’ with ’im”

“First time I’ve seen your inner child.”

“Mine, too. This investigation’s breaking my head.” She looked at him for a long beat, her look of levity dissolving. “What do you know about Monterrey?”

Temperature drop.

“That.”

“Yeah, that.”

“Just calls,” he replied. “We got calls. Police detectives from Monterrey. Went through DOD cops at Presidio. Guy named Ricks or something. Junior NCO. Stabbed to death outside a bar there. CCTV picks your pop up at the door, leaving behind Ricks. No connection beyond the fact that they were both in DLI. Your dad was doing Farsi, and the other guy, I don’t know, maybe Tagalog, so they didn’t even have classes together.”

“Why’d the cops call then?”

“Proximity? No other leads? Not sure. They called after he was . . . well, anyway, it stuck in my mind because of . . . Kabul.”

“So, what do you think? Could it have been him? Honest answer.”

“It could,” Felix said. “Review the bidding. The stabbing’s precise. One jab. In and out. Right in the carotid artery. Knowledge of anatomy. With a pencil. Weapon at hand. Total surprise, but still, something opportunistic, unplanned. Your dad’s mental state. Something about Ricks triggers him? Something about the contractors in Afghanistan, too . . . no great loss there . . . sorry, but those guys were straight-up villains. The pimp with young girls. You and your dad, close, right?”

“Very close.”

“Trigger. A guy pimping young girls. I looked into your dad before he went to DLI. He quits Delta right after a mission. Inside line, he’s not happy about it, and it did involve lethal action.”

“I remember that. I don’t know where it was, but it was right before he went to language school. Best guess, Honduras. There was a coup there at the same time.” Felix made to zip his lips. “He was kinda on the rack even before that, but not like he was after. I know he was at Tora Bora in 2003. And Latin America. Colombia especially, several times. His Spanish was nearly flawless. Best I’ve ever seen in a non-native. Several Task Forces in Iraq. Balad. Afghanistan again, twice. It hardened him.”

“What do you mean? I mean, yeah, that was a hard unit.”

“He was still my dad. Still very loving. Kind. Patient. But there was this shell on him. I can’t explain it.”

“No need to. He had to work harder and harder to keep two worlds separated. Lot of us did.”

“Can’t explain it, but I’m jealous that Petey Correa spent time with my father after I did.”

“Maybe he didn’t. Not the dad you knew.”

56

“You want what?” asked Farrell.

“Triangulation,” said McInnery.

“On Correa’s phone.”

“We don’t have phones for Felix and Halfrica. But, for some reason, they’re on Correa. They obviously have some counter-surveillance chops, and we’re tired of being toyed with. Give us real time tracking on Correa’s cell.”

Farrell was silent.

“You there?” asked McInnery.

“I’m thinkin’.”

“Or we could just resolve this now.”

“We need to know who knows what.”

“That horse may be out of the barn.”

“Give me a coupla hours. I’ll get your triangulation. Hold on interdiction. For now.”

*

673 Wexford Lane was Correa’s condo. Exceptionally neat and spanking clean. Short front yard, twenty feet to the street, with a one-car garage. Iceberg vinyl siding. Fancy white gable pediment. Charcoal gray stamped metal roof. Slender walk-up with a simple white rail, guarded by a dwarf Alberta spruce. Double casement window in front. Small Japanese maple on the side. Inside, two beds, two baths in 1,480 square feet of heated space. Walk-in closet. Gray, king-sized upholstered sleigh bed—part of a five-piece weathered-wood set. Clean, neat, functional bathroom. Hardwood floors. French doors facing the gray composite rear deck. Chalk blue walls with white trim. Living room with a 52-inch brushed nickel ceiling fan and a dozen LED can lights with a single dimmer switch. Jesolo manual reclining sofa and love seat set with matching Ottoman. Mid-century two-drawer oak coffee table. Vizio sound system.

Two pieces of living room wall art: a giant framed black-and-white photo of Muhammed Ali standing triumphantly in the ring over a fallen Sonny Liston, and a four-foot-high color photograph of Correa himself posing with full battle kit in Afghanistan.

The second bedroom was an office-slash-weight room. Tough grey carpet to accommodate a full set of dumbbells, an adjustable weight bench, a Magellan 59-inch manager’s desk bearing two Apple laptops, and a Raynesys office chair. Where he sat now. Glaring at Xander’s message.

“Fuck,” he said aloud.

Major No-Name and the Dale woman. This was a continent beyond coincidence, and the shit was closing in on the fan. Cease all work, he texted back. Stay cool

Wtf tho, you reed this shit?

Stay f-in cool!!!!!!, talk tomorrow

He texted Jace: Disasemble/clean studiokhouse, stand down everything

Valnicek texted back: Evrything???

Everything!!!

???????????

Stand by, talk soon, lay low

*

Deangela called Doc, a little astonished by how much she looked forward to it.

“Hey,” he answered. “Everything okay?”

“Hi, Doc. All good. So, coupla things.”

“Go on.”

“First, can you rent us a car?”

“Pay me back, sure.”

“Like now, and bring it by.”

“Where are you?”

“Adrian.”

“’Kay, sure. There’s a place right there. What’s the other thing?”

“We need you to bump into Petey tomorrow. If you’re still up for it.”

“How?”

“I’ll explain in person. I mean, look, sorry to rush, but we really need the car.”

“Take an Uber or a Lyft to Pelham’s on North Adrian Highway. P-E-L-H-A-M. That way, Felix doesn’t have to drive. I’ll leave now.”

“Good point. Thanks, Doc. You’re a lifesaver.”

“Fruit flavored or mint?”

*

Maroon 2020 Buick Regal.

“Looks like an old people car,” Doc said, “but there’s 270 horses in there if you need some giddy-up.”

“It’ll do,” said Deangela. She imagined Doc on horseback and suppressed a smile.

Felix leaned on the passenger side, looking across at Doc and Deangela beside the driver’s door. Doc dangled the keys for her. She took them and gazed for a moment too long into Doc’s eyes. Doc gazed back, then down. She exhaled, taking a step back.

“Good,” she said. “Great. Thanks.” She glanced over at Felix, who shifted his gaze to a captivating chain link fence.

Doc took half a step back. Looked at her again.

“So, what about this meeting?”

“Yeah,” she said, folding her arms across her chest. “We need you to stay nearby tomorrow. With your truck. We’ll pay mileage and all that. It’s Sunday, so we’ll try and pick him up at his place. Then we’ll wait. And hope.”

“For what?”

“For Petey to go somewhere. Store, restaurant, wherever. Then we do an ad hoc cover story and you bump into him.”

Doc’s knee started rocking, like he was keeping time to music no one could hear. He looked over at Felix’s fence.

“You okay with that?” she asked, her fingers reaching for his forearm.

He took her hand reassuringly. She let him.

“Sure,” he said.

“We’re at the Hampton Inn in Adrian. You drive over from Tecumseh and meet us there, or we can get you a room. We start at five.”

“AM?” he asked, knowing the answer.

“Yes.”

He thought hard.

“I’ll go home today,” he said, reluctantly releasing her hand. “If I can sleep at all, it’ll be easier there. You’ll see me at four-forty-five, okay?” Always fifteen minutes early.

“You can take the man out of the Army,” said Felix. They knew the rest.

*

Theiner Farms
Southeast Michigan
7:49 p.m.

Theiner Farms was a mixed corn, soy, and chicken CAFO operation, the latter being the most profitable. Their land stretched across both Fox and Lenawee Counties. With more than 600 acres, it had the distinction of having been named by an environmental study as one of the biggest contributors in Southeast Michigan to the pollution of Lake Erie downstream. The “farm house” was a tacky $1,780,000 McMansion with gated access.

Gildy’s husband, Richard, was in Minneapolis at a conference for North American Grain, one of the top five animal feed corporations in the country, and upon whose advisory board he sat. Their boys, Adam and Nathanael, eleven and thirteen, were upstairs in Adam’s room conducting interactive multi-player battles, door closed so she didn’t have to listen to them shout things like “Bandit at your eight o’clock!”

She sat at her desk in the downstairs office, pen poised above a tablet, reviewing the messages left at her office. The staff and interns always had Sunday’s off, and they’d gone home at noon today. She cued the next message.

“Your Larkton liaison,” said a female’s furry mezzo-soprano voice, “is directing the production and sale of methamphetamine and bestiality porn. His uniform won’t protect him. Do the Delines know about this?”

That was it.

That was enough.

She sat, paralyzed, cold waves cresting under her skin, heart rattling like a Jordison drum solo.

PART SIX

Desire, despair, desire. So many monsters.

—Annie Lennox

57

Skegum, Michigan
October 17, 2021

Wexford Lane jumped the river. Nearly a mile long, its last leg was a cul-de-sac west of 223 just past its merger into Raisin. 673 Wexford was at the tip end of that cul-de-sac.

Doc was on time, fifteen minutes early just like he said he would. He sat by himself half a block up in an eatery named Central Café, in front of an empty breakfast plate and his third cup of coffee, phone on the table, standing by.

Deangela and Felix sat in the car along the intersection with Raisin in the parking lot of the Yates Flower and Garden Center.

“Pretty upscale digs for a cop,” said Felix.

“The forensic auditors should find that intriguing,” she replied.

It was 6:48 a.m. They’d been here for just over an hour.

“Where did the term ‘fill your boots’ come from,” asked Felix.

“Dunno,” she said. “I often wonder the same thing about ‘go on a bender’.”

“Gets my goat,” he came back.

“Party pooper.”

“Why’s it a ‘fanny pack,’ when you wear it on the front?”

“Why do we drive on a parkway and park on a driveway?”

“‘Why are blue crabs called Sally.”

“No fair. That’s regional.”

*

7:27 a.m. Predawn. The eastern sky threw up a saffron glow. The mercury said two degrees above frost. Deangela and Felix wore just hoodies and jeans, idling the engine for heat. The glass was dappled inside with condensation. Deangela cracked the rear windows. She wiped the windshield’s inner surface with her stocking cap, leaving streaks of glittering beads. Tossed the cap in the back. Brushed up her short hair with her fingers.

“I had a daughter,” Felix said as the sun broke, illuminating a fan of cirrocumulus clouds with peach and sherbet.

“You what? Wait, what do you mean, ‘had’?”

“Just that. She died in 2013. And just one. Of mine.”

“Ah, Jesus.”

“We divorced when she was three. She had two younger half-brothers. Her mom remarried. She was fourteen. Named Poppy. My ex was named Hosta.” He smirked. Hosta, Poppy, right. Mother-in-law named all her daughters after flowers—Hosta, Iris, and Delphine. So, Hosta names our daughter Poppy.

“Poppy’s with me for one of my weekends. April 13th. Saturday. My place, out in Rockfish.”

“I know it,” said Deangela. “Near Fayetteville.”

“That’s right,” he said, “Anyway, she’d has her period and walks to a convenience store, not half a mile away, to pick up some pads. I’m wrapped up in nug-work on the computer, and I hand her some money before she leaves. I don’t even turn when I said bye.” His voice caught in his throat. “I didn’t even see her walk out the door.”

“What happened?”

He took a long, deep breath. “She didn’t come back. After an hour or so, I get worried, so I drive over to the place, the store. Nothin’. Ask the woman at the store, you see this black-haired teenager with silly glasses. I didn’t see Poppy before she left and she’d just came out of the shower, so I couldn’t even tell people what she was wearing. She had spiky black hair and blue eyes. Dimples and freckles.”

His eyes skittered and pooled. He sniffled. Deangela reached across and pulled tissues from the glove box. He took them. She stroked the back of his head, and he let her.

“Felix, you don’t have to tell me this.”

“I was helpless,” he said. He wiped his eyes and nose, nodding. “Roads goin’ in four directions and the whole big world just swallows her right up. I call her mom and we call the police. They say she’s prob’ly run off with her boyfriend or something, and interrogate us about our divorce.” Bitter note. “I fuckin’ hate cops,” he spat. He drew a deep breath. Deangela held his hand in both of hers. “We were insane with fear. I must’ve driven 500 miles through the streets. I’m trying to pick my daughter out of thousands of people inconceivably going about all the everyday shit in their lives. I’m on the streets for two days and nights. Every drunk, every leering man, every borderline bastard in front of a bar, every group of men in cars, I imagine having done something unthinkable to my Poppy.

“Next morning, the police call. And I knew. I knew right there when they asked it. ‘Where are you now, sir?’

“They found her in a trash can.” Deangela cried out. “A dumpster behind a bait store in Fayetteville. Raped. Repeatedly, according to what came out at the trial, and stomped to death . . .” He groaned. “. . . stomped to death, that man stamped on my child’s face with his foot until she was unrecognizable.” He rolled forward in paroxysms.

After a time, she ventured to ask him, “Who did this?”

“Oh,” he said, “some twenty-five-year-old GI. Joshua Main. E-6 from the 82^nd. Guy’s married. They catch him within three days. Someone saw the abduction. Right there in view of the store. Five minutes from my house. Someone else hears the whole thing. Thought it was a couple fighting. He took her behind Riddle Stadium, not two thousand feet from where he stayed. CCTV was on him like a rash. Tracked him from abduction to crime scene to dump site. He’s bathed in forensic evidence. His truck, too. Wearing the same shoes when he was arrested.” Felix caught his breath. “He tries to claim PTSD from Afghanistan as a defense. Guy’s a support drone who never left his barracks there. He’s in prison for life now. There’s speculation he’d done it before. At least once, but no one proved anything.”

“Horrible. Christ!”

“Oh, shit,” said Felix.

“What?”

“There’s Correa,” he said. Deangela looked up. Correa’s black Ram took a right onto Raisin. Deangela whipped up the phone.

“Doc,” she said, “Petey’s coming past you. Stay on the line.”

“Got it.”

*

Correa hadn’t slept for shit. He’d drifted disquietly off after midnight, woke to piss at 4:44 a.m. Drifted out again for maybe an hour after wrestling with the bedclothes. Gave up when his phone said 6:30. He filled the drip percolator, hit the brew button, and took a shower. Threw on a pair of Bonobo jeans, a thick olive hybrid-hoodie, and black Doc Martens. He was starving and checked the fridge. Jack shit. One egg, a sliver of dried out cheddar cheese, and a bunch of condiments with naught else to put them on. He filled a 20-ounce Contigo with coffee, added ten drops of stevia, went outside, and cranked his truck.

Sunday morning. Meijers had more employees than customers. He pushed a cart back to Dairy and Eggs, grabbed a dozen Heritage Free Range, then patrolled the aisles for Bolthouse vegetable juice, whole grain bread, oatmeal, bananas, and a small slab of top sirloin. As he placed the meat in the cart, he felt someone behind him.

“Is that you, man?”

He turned to see Baby Doc Fermin, dressed in worn work clothes, carrying a hand basket with an eight-pack of Gatorade, beef jerky, and a giant bag of Santitas corn chips.

“Holy shit, it is you!” Fermin exclaimed, holding out his hand.

Correa stood frozen for a moment, color rising in his face.

“It’s me, man, Hector. Baby Doc. Sixth Group?”

Correa reluctantly took the hand.

“What you doin’ here?” Correa demanded.

“I live here, man, over in Tecumseh. What are you doin’ here?”

“I live here, too, right here in Skegum.”

“No fuckin’ way,” said Doc. “How long?”

“Eight years.”

“Wow, I figured you to stay in the Army. Whaddaya do these days?”

“I’m a police officer,” Correa said. “Why are you in a grocery store at eight in the morning. On Sunday?”

“What?” Doc feigned surprise at the abruptness of the question.

“It’s Sunday. You work on Sunday?”

“No, man, not normally, but I want to check a job I’m startin’ tomorrow.”

“What kinda job?”

“Hey, hermano, got my own business, you know. Building demolition. My truck’s outside. Got my name on it and everything.” He immediately wondered if that was too much unsolicited explanation. “I’m headin’ out now, man. You got a number? We should catch up.” Doc set down his basket and pulled out his phone.

Correa hesitated, looking a little trapped.

“Sure, man. You ready?”

“Go on, dude.”

“Five one seven . . . two five eight . . . two nine eight seven.”

“Hey, man,” Doc said, holding his hand out again, “What a coincidence, eh? All this time, we’re like ten miles apart. I’ll let you finish your shoppin’, Pedro, but it’s good to see you again, brother.”

“Likewise,” said Correa, his face still guarded. “You take care, okay.”

58

Correa used his phone to search. There it was. Hector Fermin, Fermin Unbuilding, Tecumseh. But what the fuck! With all that ‘hey dude’ shit. Baby Doc was quiet, like stuck up and shit, and it was obvious he’d never liked the rest of the team. Always judging them about the girls and the way they treated the fucking hajjis and shit. Finger-fucking his rosary beads in his bunk. Church boy. Then he remembered.

Rat.

He was the rat to that psycho team sergeant, Dale.

Major No-Name. The Dale bitch. Now this rat bastard. Like a fucking time machine.

*

Per their request, McInnery and Haldane were up on Correa’s phone since Saturday night. Farrell patched them into a live feed. They’d stayed on at the Larkton and slept until seven in the morning on Sunday. At 7:40 a.m., Correa moved. So did they.

They intercepted as he parked his truck in the Meijers lot, and parked around the corner of the big store out of sight. McInnery stayed outside, his coif and physique too noticeable. Haldane followed Correa in.

Ten minutes later, Haldane cracked the driver’s door and didn’t see McInnery. He cast looked up as McInnery turned the corner, smiling like the cat with the canary.

“What?” said Haldane. “You look all happy and shit.”

“Would you like to follow Correa, or would you prefer Felix and Halfrica?”

“Fuck you talkin’ about?”

“They’re in a dark red Buick Regal. Sit tight. They know this van.”

“No shit! They see us?”

“Nope, and Halfrica just popped a tracker on the cop’s truck.”

“Fuckin-A. Is it too early to call Farrell?”

“Wake his ass up.”

*

Correa pulled away from the Meijers lot, circling once around it to set up out of sight. He watched Fermin pull his truck out onto Summer Street, take two lefts, and drive just out near Madison barely a mile away. A maroon Buick stayed on the truck’s bumper. Correa stayed three cars and more than three hundred yards back. The truck and the Buick pulled into The Galley, as Correa went to the next intersection, hooked another left, and parked at a closed auto-body shop with line of sight. Fermin dismounted, locked, shut the truck door, and walked over to the Buick. A figure rose from either side. Deangela Dale and Major No-Name.

“Coño!”

*

The Galley again.

“Were you nervous?” Deangela asked Doc. They’d all gathered for breakfast. Second breakfast for Doc the hobbit. Apart from them, there was only one elderly couple there, and one waitress—the one with the glass eye and thick braid. Name tag: Frankie.

“Like a bug in a chicken coop. Not sure why.”

“It was an acting job,” offered Felix. “Like an audition. Nerves.”

They all nodded together.

The old couple’s coats hung on the back of their chairs. The man had short white hair and skinny liver-spot arms. He wore a blue Walmart Polo-knockoff. His wife was a little pug-faced woman with a short perm she wore like a helmet. Dressed in a long-tailed T with horizontal blue-and-white stripes and a thread-thin necklace suspending a gold cross. They stole surreptitious glances at the strange trio—bearded white guy with his long hair and half an ear, sturdy little Mexican in work clothes, and a butch light-skin female.

Frankie, the one-eyed waitress, remembered Felix and Deangela. Good tippers. And the ear. She smiled extravagantly, arriving with the three meals. The early rise, the morning chill, and the surveillance stretch had muscled up their appetites. Pecan pancakes and bacon for Doc. New York strip with three eggs, home fries, and wheat toast for Felix. Farmer’s omelet with biscuits and sausage gravy for Deangela.

They bolted their food for a few minutes before Doc asked, “So, what was that for again?”

Deangela took a beat to swallow a forkful of gravy-biscuit.

“We’ve spooked him now. Wait and see what he does.”

“It’s Sunday, he won’t be on the scanner.”

“True,” she said. Felix smiled at his plate.

“So how do we know where he goes?” Doc insisted.

“I tagged his truck with a tracker,” she said.

“Is that legal?” he asked.

Felix looked through his brows, put his finger to his lips, and whispered, “Shhh.”

*

Correa carried his groceries back into the condo, poured a tumbler of vegetable juice, went for a piss, came back to the kitchen, and stripped the plastic off the steak.

A beep in the coffee table drawer. Gildy-phone. He washed and dried his hands. Read the message: Verbatim message received last night on my office phone: ‘Your Larkton liaison is directing the production and sale of methamphetamine and illegal bestiality porn. His uniform won’t protect him. Do the Delines know about this?’ voice, female. Wtaf Pete!!!!!!!!

The glass on the big picture of himself shattered when the phone hit it.

*

“Where are you now?” demanded Farrell.

“Ann Arbor. We’re changing cars,” explained McInnery. He stood outside the rental office. “Harry’s inside now doing paperwork.”

“You left ’em?”

“Not really. They made our vehicle yesterday. They’re following Correa. We’re tracking Correa. Ergo, we can follow them by tracking Correa.”

“Fair enough. What’s that plate number?”

“Michigan Delta November Tango seven seven six zero.”

“Gimme a second.”

McInnery waited. Haldane came out with the rental contract in his hand.

“Goddamn!” Farrell came back. “You ain’t gonna believe this shit.”

“That’s what everyone says lately. What won’t I believe?”

“Your truck said ‘Fermin Unbuilding,’ right?”

“Correct.”

“Operational Detachment Alpha Six Two Four Six, Sixth Special Forces Group, Afghanistan, 2010. Junior medical sergeant . . . are you ready? . . . Hector Arlo Fermin.”

“The team.”

“The very same. So, now we got Felix hiring the team sergeant’s daughter. We got the team’s commo man slash cop. And we have the team’s medic talking with the team’s commo man, all in the same place at the same time.”

“It’s a lot,” agreed McInnery.

“It’s achieved critical fucking mass,” corrected Farrell. “We need to tie this shit off, Arthur. Consider this a green light. All four. Make it clean. Make it a stone fuckin’ mystery.”

“Understood.” McInnery ended the call.

“What’s he got to say?” asked Haldane. The Hertz guy pulled an olive-green Highlander around. Left it running for them.”

“Guy in the truck, he was on the SF team. Junior medic. Hector Fermin.”

“No shit. So, what’s the plan?”

“Kill order,” answered McInnery, talking across the roof while he held the passenger door. “His words, ‘make it a stone fuckin’ mystery’.”

“Who?”

“All of them. Felix, Halfrica, Correa, and Fermin.”

“Great. A cop, two other special ops veterans, and a private detective, all at once and on the down-low. He want us to find Cleopatra’s tomb while we’re at it?”

59

Gildy answered on the first ringtone.

“Yeah,” she said, the lover’s voice gone now, displaced by a farm boss. Real. Ugly. Dangerous. “What in the actual fuck is goin’ on, Pete?”

“It’s complicated,” he said, but there was neither remorse nor humility in his tone. “But let’s get something straight, Senator. I’m gonna unfuck this situation. In the meantime, you got a political career, a husband, and a reputation on the line, and right now, I’m your only hope of savin’ ’em.”

“You son-of-a-bitch! Dope!? Bestiality porn!?”

“Don’t believe everything you hear. This is some bullshit. Old enemies gettin’ back.”

“Yeah, well they know about us, don’t they. And that’s not bullshit.”

“What-the-fuck-ever! Now, you listen to me, a’right?”

“What? . . . Fucking what then?”

“You need to get hold of Jason Bagley.”

“The Sheriff? Have you lost your— ”

“Jason Bagley, goddamnit. He knows me, and I got shit on ’im, okay. You call Bagley. You use every scrap of leverage you got, and you tell that motherfucker, in no uncertain terms, that he’s to do exactly as I say, or we’ll all go down the fuckin’ sewer together. You got that?”

“Dope and pornography, fuck! Bagley?”

“Stop jumpin’ to conclusions, Gildy. It’s money, okay. With Bagley, it’s about money and family. Like his fucking brother.”

“Ralph? Jesus Christ! I wish I’d never met you.”

“Too late. Eyes front, bitch.”

*

“Ralph,” Fabiszac answered.

“We need to talk.” It was Correa.

“Now? I’m with my wife, we’re headed into church.”

“Well, take a fuckin’ second. Tell ’er you got an emergency or some shit.”

“Look, I’ll call you back—”

“Motherfucker, step the fuck away. We’re talkin’ now.”

“Judith, I gotta take this. Be in in a minute . . . gimme a sec, Pete . . . okay.”

“You need to talk to your brother.”

“Jason?”

“You got another brother? Yeah, Jason. Also, we may have a temporary cash flow issue.”

“Issue?”

“You ain’t gotta repeat everything I say, Ralph. Just do what I say. Call your fuckin’ brother, and tell him whatever you gotta tell him, but when I contact ’im later today, he’s gotta do exactly what I tell ’im to do.”

“What’s going on?”

“We got private investigators on our asses, and it looks like they know everything.”

“Everything?”

“There you go with that repeatin’ thing again. Every. Fucking. Thing. If I’m gonna stop the fuckin’ bleeding here, I’m gonna have to take desperate measures, okay. I need your brother with me on this.”

“What? What measures?” Panic crept into his voice.

“Stuff you don’t need to know, but your brother does, okay. Call ’im. Go on into church, Ralph, then come out and call Bro. By the time I call him tomorrow, I want him prepped. It’s the difference between you and him stayin’ in beautiful Skegum at your houses or over at Harrison Correctional.”

*

“Papi, Hace mucho que no nos vemos.”

“Petey?” his father answered. “Hadn’t heard from you in three months.”

“Yeah, Papi, I’m sorry about that, man. Culpa mia. Look, I need a favor. Business thing.”

“Business? You’re a cop, Petey.”

“Got some sidelines, Pop. You know how it is. Soy tu hijo.”

“So, what do you need?”

“Little thing. I need some time off for a deal. A week. So, later today or tomorrow, someone from the PD’s gonna call. I need you to tell ’em my grandma died.”

“She’s been dead for fifteen years. Your mom’s mama’s still alive.”

“White lie, guapo. You know how business is. And if anyone asks, I been with you from tonight ’til next Friday, okay?”

*

“Hey, Lieutenant.”

“Correa? What’s goin’ on?”

“Hey, man, I got some bad news today.”

60

Xander McKenzie wasn’t Walter White, but Xander was an adept cook just like his fictional counterpart. Xander’s inciting motive, though, wasn’t financial desperation in the face of impending death.

It was pussy.

Xander was a smart kid in school, and he was horny as a hedge sparrow. Problem was, he was put together in just such a way as to neither repel nor attract the girls. And he was shy. The only son of remote parents who lived in a war of silences with one another, cushioned each by a pharmacopeia of prescriptions, he’d turned to books—pop science especially. At fifteen, in 2003, he won a science prize by making perfume. When he was sixteen, he discovered the “aphrodisiac” GHB on an internet search and set about learning from the dark web exactly how to synthesize it. He sourced GABA and sodium nitrate from local stores. Using the Sandmeyer reaction protocol, he produced his GBL (γ-butyrolactone), and from there it was all paint by the numbers stuff. He never slipped it to a girl without her knowing. He just had something that people could take with a glass of water to make them feel different . . . and better. The sex just followed.

So did the money.

Xander was smart about science, smarter still about not using what he made himself. He didn’t want to be his parents. He didn’t picture himself a drug dealer at all. His temperament didn’t run to the rebellious, certainly not a risk taker, but only to quietly doing what was necessary to get the things he wanted. Especially pussy. The whole thing happened incrementally, really.

On the other hand, Xander was not smart about human nature. He just couldn’t see forward into consequences in that utterly mysterious social arena. As with chemistry, he saw life as a series of material causes-and-effects, but human beings weren’t chemicals. And so Xander tended to walk face first into the calculating wills of others.

One of the guys to whom he sold GHB, Gerry Eggelston, who could not for the life of him keep his damn mouth shut, re-sold to some bikers. In 2008, after Eggelston boasted to the bikers about his friend the chemist, a representative from the Freebooters of Detroit showed up where Xander was living large on his GHB proceeds in his upscale Skegum pussy-pad.

A thuggish character, Freebooter Dennis Grange, visited with inducements for a new project: making meth. The inducement, apart from a lot of money, was that women who wanted meth and used meth would offer up sex for meth, and fuck like bonobos when they were on it. Yeah, the older tweakers were frayed at the edges, but there was always a fresh supply of newer users who were—in a word—hotter than popcorn farts.

Gerry worked for a time as the middle-man, transporting product between corn country and Detroit. But when he got stupid and demanded a bigger cut, he met with an accident, i.e., falling off a railroad bridge near Adrian and breaking his neck in the gravel shallows of the River Raisin.

The Freebooters allowed Xander a limited local clientele of his own, so long as he never undersold them and never, ever tried to expand. Xander flourished, in spite of the importune circumstances of his entry into the trade, and things fell into a groove until, in 2015, the Freebooters suddenly broke all contact, and he was approached by a young policeman named Pete Correa.

It was 2021 now, two weeks to the day before Halloween, when Pete called him on the burner.

“Hey, Pete.”

“Xander, what’s up, man?”

“Same shit different day, Chief.”

“Look, Xander, we got ourselves a bit of a problem.”

“What kind of problem?”

“Nothin’ major, dude. Just some changes. But can you call in sick and meet me out at the lab, say Tuesday around noon?”

“Sure, no problem. I need to bring anything?”

“Yeah, as a matter of fact. Pick us up six camouflage tarps, ten by sixteen are fine.”

“Tarps?”

“Yeah, I’ll explain when we meet up. Six of ’em.”

*

Jacek “Jace” Valnicek II was born in 1976. For the first thirteen years of his life, he lived on a 60-acre farm just across the line from Fox in Lenawee County.

His father, Jacek I, was a mercurial drunk who ran the operation into the ground by 1989, whereupon he lost all but the last 21-acres of wooded land, the house, the corn crib, and an outbuilding. The rest was bought up by the Theiners to convert into Federal corn and soy subsidies.

Jace’s mother, Sloane, was a drunk, too.

The condition of the isolated house was sacrificed to drink, debt, and gambling on illegal dog fights, for which Jace Senior raised pit bulls in what was once the corn crib. The family, if it could be called that, fell into a spiral of mutual abuse and depravity, to which Jace II was a witness, a victim, and—by and by—a participant.

Ostracized in a school Jace attended only sporadically, and then only unshorn and in dirty clothes, he wore the stigma of farm-town rumors regarding various forms of debauchery practiced in the Valnicek household, including bestiality.

Having been routinely knocked about by both parents between episodes of inebriated sexual abuse (by both parents), when Jace was confronted by schoolmates, he responded with explosive violence, which, in 1990, landed him finally in the Maurice Spear Juvenile Corrections facility for aggravated assault—for putting 16-year-old Henry Dupree in the hospital with a fractured skull and leaving him deaf in one ear.

In Spear Corrections, he perfected his fighting skills, his tolerance for solitary confinement, and a broader education in the practices of crime. In particular, the business of procuring and selling Schedule II drugs. His mentor for the latter was Victor Dillon, with whom he joined thirty-three months later as a business partner based in Skegum. Then the LSD thing happened.

For raping his girl, Kandy Quinn, with a bat while they were on LSD, his nine-year stretch in Harrison started in 1997. He met patrolman Pedro Correa in 2015, when Correa caught him with meth he was peddling for the Freebooters, a connection that dried up four months later after Correa sank three men and their bikes in Vines Lake—something Correa shared with him in a moment of uncritical fellowship in 2018.

By then, Jace was raising his own dogs—pit bulls and Rottweilers—not for combat, but for the market in macho dogs and his own fetish, i.e., scouring the web for zoophile personals. When Correa shared his grand secret, Jace reciprocated by sharing his own, and a new business was born.

Jace Valnicek became not only a salesperson for Xander McKenzie’s “Pop Top” brand of methamphetamine, but, with the assistance of cameraman Cijay Nash, a professional pornographer. The outbuilding on the Valnicek property, hidden along a trial in the woods, was converted into Xander’s lab. Jace and his dog operation stayed on a five-acre property less than half a mile from the men’s prison, brick ranch visible from the highway at sixty yards, kennel in the back, surrounded by woods. Jace and Cijay ran the Chadbourn studio.

Jace had also become Correa’s enforcer, committing dozens of assaults and two homicides on Correa’s behalf. He leaned into the murders—one arrogant and smart-mouthed potential competitor in 2019, and one dangerously talkative customer and sometime puppy-performer just last year in 2020. He enjoyed the finality of something or someone dying. The decisive power of it.

*

October 17, 2021

Jace’s burner vibrated in his pocket.

“Yo, Jace man.”

“What’s up, Pete?”

“Look, buddy, we got ourselves a problem. You remember the studio-spy?”

“Little black bitch, got picked up by your colleagues.”

“That one, yeah. Well, she’s a private investigator and she’s got two buddies, older dude and a Mexican guy.”

“Yah, so?”

“So, they’re onto the other stuff, too. The sales enterprise.”

“This is not good.”

“Not good at all.”

“Whadda we do then?”

“Looks like we’re gonna have to use extreme measures.”

“Extreme, like extreme?”

“Exactly.”

“When?” Jace, no hesitation. “How?”

“Don’t write any of this down, okay.”

*

Jason Bagley’s career as Fox County Sheriff began on the tail end of his father Wayne’s tenure as Mayor of Skegum, in 2004. Jason was 34-years-old. Jason had rebelled a bit at his own privileged upbringing as a member of the Fox County Bagley aristocracy by majoring in Criminal Justice at Adrian College. He attended police academy afterward, and took employment in nearby Washtenaw County as a Deputy. He achieved a kind of reconciliation with his parents by agreeing to run for Sheriff in Fox County in the 2004 elections and taking office in January 2005.

In part, he was motivated to make the step up by his marriage to Nicole Bennett in 2001, his affair with whom had led to divorce from his first wife of eight years, Leslie (Gibson). He’d had two children with Leslie, both girls—Amber and Elizabeth—for whom he was now obliged to pay $1,326 a month in child support. Wife two, Nicole, was a steam roller in bed, accounting for the white heat of the affair. In other arenas of her life, however, she was motivated by an insatiable avarice and a compulsion to control that included generous helpings of lies, manipulation, passive aggression, active aggression, and belittlement.

Jason, for all his canniness and even physical courage in law enforcement, found himself unaccountably incapable of defending himself against Nicole’s machinations, and he mollified her through retail. With credit cards. By 2007, he was desperately in debt, apart from a $600,000-plus mortgage, to the tune of almost $800,000, and his family had to come to the rescue. His parents loaned him half a million at no interest, to be paid as feasible. Jason was humiliated by the whole arrangement, and by then he and Nicole were sending Mark and Eddie, their two sons, to the same private school that Amber and Elizabeth had attended in earlier years. (Mark was scheduled to start Albion College, at over fifty-K annually, in the coming year.)

The 2008 crash slammed his family’s investments in real estate and insurance—the very sectors most over-leveraged. That same year, Jason and a deputy raided a meth lab—operated by one Xander McKenzie on behalf of the Freebooter Motorcycle Club out of Detroit. Xander made an offer on behalf of the Freebooters during an informal interview with Jason, one that promised a substantial income. Income invisible to both the IRS and the insatiable Nicole.

Crucial evidence disappeared before Xander’s arraignment, resulting in dismissal of all charges, and a newer, better lab reappeared, now with a protective shield provided by Jason, in a refurbished hunting cabin on the Valnicek property along a meandering fire trail between Hobbins Highway (a gravel two-lane county road) and Phillips Highway (a paved two-lane).

In 2015, management of this covert income stream changed hands from the Freebooters to, of all people, a New York-born patrolman and former Special Forces guy in Skegum.

Today was October 17^th, and he’d just gotten off the phone with Senator Theiner, a call he’d taken outside his McMansion where Nicole was smoking a bowl—her new hobby with legalization, which at least mellowed her the fuck out—while she watched Sex in the City reruns.

He hung up with Gildy Theiner and called Pete Correa.

“What the hell, Correa? You threaten my brother? And a fucking state Senator? You lost your goddamn mind?”

“Not threats,” Correa said. “Warnings. The wheels are comin’ off our thing.”

“You mean Ralph’s thing.”

“Don’t piss on my leg, Sheriff. You took a cut, you looked the other way, and you discouraged the competition. You in this shit up to yo motherfuckin’ neck. We got a big problem right now. Private dicks from out of town. With local help. Fuckers are on us like poison ivy.”

“Fuck . . . Fuck!”

“I got a solution. Not an easy one, but it keeps you, me, and your brother out of the Harrison segregation unit. A reset solution. Like nothin’ happened at all.”

“What kind of reset?”

“Big problems need big solutions.”

“I don’t like the sound of this?”

“You like the sound that cell door makes? Crazy fuckin’ inmates screamin’ all night?”

“Fuck.”

“You and me, we’re meetin’ tomorrow. Got a pen?”

61

Tecumseh, Michigan

Doc invited Deangela and Felix to his house. They needed a safe space and some rest.

Felix was gray in the face by ten that morning and twitching like a cockatoo. Then he’d started laughing maniacally. He explained, between giggles and guffaws, that this, too, was a symptom of his ailment. They’d understood, but it was weird as hell nonetheless.

Midafternoon. Felix napped on Doc’s bed. He’d taken pills. Deangela and Doc sat together on the big antique sofa, two steaming cups of Lady Gray on cork coasters in front of them. The tracker display on her laptop traced Correa’s travels, all the while compiling a record. So far, nothing unusual. One more trip to market and one to a gas station. Otherwise, hunkered down in his home.

“How come you’re single,” she asked, immediately wishing she could take it back. He looked across at her. His mouth was open, but nothing came out. “Oh, shit,” she said. “That came out weird, sorry. I’m not . . . I mean . . . that’s not . . . I was just curious. Like, you’re like, what, thirty-two—”

She set the laptop on the table.

“Four. I’m thirty-four. Thirty-five on the twenty-sixth of this month.”

“Yeah, and so, most guys, most people really, they’ve, you know, tied the knot. You’ve got steady work. You’re a nice guy. You’re . . .”

“What?”

“Well, you’re nice looking.” He bowed his head to hide the color in his face. She blushed, too. “You’re not gay?” she said suddenly, looking up.

He snorted. “No, I’m not gay. Had a few girlfriends, I just . . . I don’t know.”

Deangela felt something unexpected, a frisson of . . . what? Not jealousy surely.

“How many?”

“I mean, not even girlfriends really. A couple. In high school, I was crazy in love with Kayla Graves. Red-headed Anglo girl who was in the debate club and played violin. Unrequited.” He smiled. “Girl from church, Liliana Gimenez. She was gonna wait for me while I was in the Army, but she had another boyfriend before I even finished jump school. Some dates here and there.”

“You equivocating?”

“Now?” He smiled. “A little. Not big on discussing personal stuff that involves other people. About life and marriage, I’m equivocating quite a bit. I’m indecisive. And kinda selfish. I have my little spot here, house the way I like it, my own music, my own books, my own bed, my own habits, you know. You ever been married? Or gay?”

She laughed.

“My best friend is. Gay. But I’m not, uh . . . mmh, I can’t.”

“What?”

“Okay, so I’ve only had sex one time in my entire life.” She just spat it out.

“What!?”

“Yeah, and I was toasted on weed, and it was maybe the clumsiest and most embarrassing thing that’s ever happened to me. In college, right after my dad died.”

They both looked down at their own hands.

“Yeah,” she said breaking the sudden silence. “So, that [air quotes] sex doesn’t really count. My mom spent years in limbo with my dad’s death. Cosmic gut punch when he—.”

“Limbo?”

“They were separated, sort of. Different domiciles, but neither ever showed any interest in moving on. I mean, they still had what I think of as conjugal visits, but he refused to sleep in the same house. She went along with it.”

“Why?”

“Oh, he took an Ambien or something one night, woke up in the middle of a hallucination of some kind. Pinned her to the floor with his hands around her neck.”

“Wow.”

“Yeah, so. 2001, right after Tora Bora.”

“He was at Tora Bora?”

“He was at everything,” she said, looking up at Doc’s face. “Except our house, my first period, our birthdays, their anniversaries, all those little punctuation points in life you peg meaning to. Don’t get me wrong. He tried really hard to spend time with me. When he was around. Great times. Birding. Fishing.”

“Birding? Like bird watching?”

“Family thing, me, my mom, him.”

“Interesting. And fishing?”

“Oh yeah, I still fish. Mama’s got a boat. If I had a garage or something, I’d have one, too. You fish?”

“Not since I was a kid. Bobber and worm stuff.”

They sat silent for a time.

“On relationships,” he tried to explain again, “You know, like, I’m no good at the hookup thing. I have sex with someone, I’m in danger of falling in love with her. Even if I don’t really know her. Body gets that close, I can’t seem to leave my head and heart out of it. Recovering Catholic kid, I guess.”

She wondered why and how this conversation had come to pass.

“Speaking of which,” she said, “I missed Mass today, and I need to call my mom.”

“Didn’t take you for a church girl.”

She laughed.

“Hardly a church girl. It’s just one of those anchor points.”

“Never makes you mad, the church?”

“The it-church does, hell yes, all the time. Institutions gonna institution. I’m with the she-church.”

“Not sure what that means.”

“Still trying to figure it out myself,” she smiled and snickered. “Ever hear of Marie Laveau?”

“Who?”

“Marie Laveau, the [air quotes] Voodoo Queen of New Orleans. 1801 to 1881. Free black. Fifteen kids if I recall correctly. Activist of sorts. She had a white French nobleman as a consort. Nurse and pharmacist to the sick. Visitor to prisoners, and she may have smuggled suicide poison to people scheduled for the gallows. Like a Kevorkian to the condemned. She’s also reputed to have owned a few slaves. And she was a hairdresser, of all things. Creole polymath.” Deangela snorted. “They called her the Pope of Voodoo. She was feared. And respected. Ministered and did magic for all colors and classes. Marie Laveau was a Catholic. Torquemada was, too, but so was Dorothy Day. Gangsters and saints, cops and criminals, pacifists and Generals. Sinners’ church. If it has room for Marie Laveau and all those others, then I figure it still has room for me. Doubts and difficulties notwithstanding. Lately, I admit, it’s been a difficult thing, seein’ past all this shit. Other hand, I don’t know. Spirits, saints, magic, miracles? Shit, I’ll take whatever I can get.”

“Fair enough,” he said.

They each took a sip of tea.

“When we did . . . all that, the mission,” Doc took a long breath, “we killed an old man and old lady.”

Deangela gave a little gasp.

“Yeah. Our Captain got the wrong house. They were all stone huts. Bunched up. All look the same. It was night. Your dad, he’s run off already, so things are already goin’ south. We should’ve aborted. But Captain Dunny, he was our commanding officer, ‘Captain Bob’ we called him, he says go ahead, and he puts us on the wrong house. Me, I just figured out a day earlier what Gene and Pedro did to that girl and her mom, and I’m a mess, and our team tech, a guy named Peter Townhall, Chief, he was on the verge of a panic attack, and Bobby, our intel sergeant, is arguing with the Captain in the dark, and we’re out there with just ten guys and no vehicles, and then we hit this house. Door kickin’ stuff, [air quotes] ‘dynamic entry.’ Pedro blows the hinges off the front door with a shotgun, and five of us just crash into this tiny little place, Pedro, Falhauber, our weapons guy, Bobby, me, and Captain Dunny. That order. Pedro first through the door.” His gaze sweeping the memories up from the floor, Doc laid out the geography with his hands. “There’s three rooms. This little front room, a bedroom behind that, and a kind of open-fire-patio-kitchen thing attached near the back. This scared old man, wearing pajamas.” Doc, eyes pooling, blew off air like he was extinguishing candles. “This old man comes out, and Pedro drops him with the shotgun, bang,” he yelped, making Deangela jump, “just like that! No hesitation. The wife runs out. Dives across her husband. The blood, it’s spreading across the floor like a flood. Flashlight beams wavin’ around the dark room like a light saber fight, and the old lady, she covers her husband and screams . . . I’ll hear that forever . . . and then Fall, Falhauber, he’s jacked up and he just fires a three-round burst into her head and the screaming stops, and like that,” he snapped his fingers, “it’s dead quiet. We can hear ourselves breathing, our gear rattling, a dog barking off in the village. The old woman’s pumping blood into a lake of blood. It sticks to our boots and makes these . . . noises. And we just leave them there. Like they’re nothin’.” He let out another long breath. “Gene’s right outside the house. A ricochet, prob’ly from Falhauber’s rifle, kills him. Instantly. We come out, he’s just collapsed in a pile. We start draggin’ him with us to leave the ville . . . Christ, he was heavy . . . and these three Taliban types show up. There’s a two-minute firefight in the street, where we accidentally kill the guy we’re sent to capture, some Taliban bigwig. Three of them dead. Gene dead. Two old people dead. Two dead women in Zama. All in, like, less than five days.

“Anyway, next day, I’m hurtin’. Bad, okay, like, my heart hurts, and I go to see the priest. Well, the Catholic chaplain, that’s what you get, okay. I tell him everything. Seal of confession stuff. The thing with Pedro and Gene, the old couple, all of it. You know what he says to me?”

“What?”

“That he and I were [air quotes] ‘prohibited by law,’ I’ll never forget that phrase, ‘prohibited by law,’ from discussing classified material, and that the rape-murder thing in Zama is [air quotes again] ‘a very sensitive matter.’ I felt like he slapped me. I say to him, to a priest, me, the guy who prays the rosary by the book, four mysteries and all of it, I say, ‘What the fuck does that mean?’, and I never go to Mass again.”

“Wow.” She realized she was clutching Doc’s hand.

“That was the same day,” he said.

“Same day?”

“That your dad was in Kabul.”

She released a trembling breath and dropped his hand.

“Sorry,” he said. “Didn’t mean to dig it all up.”

“It’s okay,” she said, a catch in her throat, her face a cloud.

“Oh, God, I’m so sorry,” he said again.

“It’s not you.” The cloud became a trickle. “My dad’s been gone eleven years,” she said biting back a cry. “I lost my friend last month. Way more than a friend.” A vibrato of drawn breath. “And Milo just had a stroke, and he’s already a thousand years old. And I’m thirty, and my mom wants me to make babies, and Felix is dying of some horrible fucking disease, and we got a woman killed, and my dad prob’ly murdered some guy in California, and I was kicked out of an academic career, and I almost killed my mother by being born, and there’s government goons and this fucking cop, and I really really like you, and I miss my damn dog—” She covered her face with both hands.

“Hey,” he said. “Hey hey hey.” She leaned into his embrace and stayed that way, falling leaves outside ticking against the house, until they could both breathe again.

*

She yawned. It provoked one from him.

“Early start today.”

“It was,” he agreed.

She untangled herself and stood. Propped a throw pillow against the arm of the sofa and pressed Doc back onto it. He yielded. She slid between him and the back of the sofa, curled up, and laid her head and hands on his chest.

“Just a nap,” she said. “Can I trust you?”

He laid his arm across hers, took her hand, and turned on his side, pulling her snugly along his back, like two spoons.

“You can,” he said. “I hope.”

She laughed softly.

In five minutes, they were asleep.

62

Skegum, Michigan
October 18, 2021

Fermin’s “chance meeting” burrowed into Correa’s head like a demon mole. Coincidence, my ass! But why would Baby Doc do that? Two answers: one—to fuck him up and make him do something stupid, two—to distract him. And how did he coordinate the “accidental” meet?

“Holy shit!” he said to the empty room.

He stalked through the parlor and yanked open the door to the garage. He punched the opener to turn on the light and inspected the undercarriage on his truck.

When he found the GPS tracker, he started to remove it. Then he stopped. He smiled to himself. They’d just made it easy. They were tracking him, meaning he could lead them along like a trained ferret.

*

Correa and Sheriff Bagley parked cop-69—vehicles facing opposite directions, driver’s windows adjacent. Correa sat in his truck. Bagley, in uniform, was in an official Explorer. He looked like he was about to shit a screw worm. “No fuckin’ way.”

“Yes, way,” insisted Correa, “because it’s the only fuckin’ way.”

“You’re talking about killin’ five people? At once? Tomorrow?”

“Correct.”

“You realize, don’t you, that I never fired my weapon except at the range, right? I never killed anyone, and now you’re talkin’ mass murder?”

“Jace’ll do three of them, then I’ll do Jace and Xander. All you gotta do is be there for backup, then run the story and investigation. Or we can all go to prison alive. You’re call.”

“Goddamnit!” Bagley lit his third cigarette in fifteen minutes. Forty-nine degrees outside and he was sweating. He stared straight ahead, blaming Nicole. He wanted to pray, but was afraid he’d be struck by lightning or break out in boils or some shit. Correa, intransigent, just sat there and watched him. “Whaddaya mean, backup?”

“You sit in the shop with my Winchester, watchin’ the driveway,” explained Correa. “Park your truck over behind the generator. I get the out-of-towners to follow me and Xander in. Xander don’t know shit. Jace gonna set up with a deer rifle on the road to catch ’em comin’ in. They dismount. Jace takes ’em out. Then he comes up to me and Xander by the shop, and I shoot both of ’em.”

He could have been explaining how he’d repair an appliance. Fucking psycho bastard.

“So, why ‘backup’?”

“Jace misses, then you gotta take the out-of-towners. I’ll help, comes to that. They just don’t leave, bottom line.” Bagley made a noise like a turkey hen. “Thing is,” Correa continued, “if this plays like it’s supposed to, we bury the bodies, get rid of their car and Jace’s truck, and this shit becomes just another misper.” Bagley was the color of paste. “Oh yeah,” said Correa. “I’m gonna need your truck for a while.”

*

Tecumseh, Michigan

Felix had rented two rooms at the Tecumseh Inn and they’d all agreed to meet up at the City Limits Diner for breakfast at nine. Felix and Deangela were headed there now, bundled in their hoodies against the chill. Felix wore his watch cap, rolled up over a ponytail, half-ear on unabashed display. Scary looking, she thought as they took in the autumn maples along East Chicago Boulevard.

“You guys looked pretty cozy in there,” teased Felix. “The woman who doesn’t do [air quotes] relationships.”

“Shut up,” she blushed. “I hugged you once. Doesn’t mean we’re engaged. We were tired.”

“So was I. I hugged a pillow.”

“I felt vulnerable. I do the same with my mom and my friend, Cedar.”

“Not judgin’,” he chortled.

The GPS lady ordered them to turn left.

“That’s it,” he said. The lot was almost full. Two-toned brick with barkwood-red shingles. Doc’s truck was parked there already. “Your (ahem) friend arrived early I see.”

She held up her middle finger as she wheeled into a slot.

Inside, the place was at capacity. Doc sat in a booth by the back wall under a framed sepia photograph of 1900 Tecumseh. The Morning Show played with delayed subtitles on a silenced television. Doc wore a black and green buffalo-plaid flannel, denim trucker jacket, and a short-billed leather flatcap.

“Nice hat,” said Felix as they sat. He was unusually playful this morning. Doc grinned weakly, eyes dropping.

Their menus were already on the table. Surrounded by kitchen smells, Doc nursed a mug of milky coffee. A heater fan buzzed across the drone of many conversations. Deangela smiled warmly at Doc, and he reciprocated. She eyed the maple and blueberry syrups on the table and looked around at the pancakes on other customers’ plates. She and Doc were the youngest people in the restaurant.

“Drinks?” The waitress appeared out of nowhere. Deangela did the description exercise in her head: white female, fifty, heavy-not-obese, medium length permed ginger hair (a week’s worth of white roots), blue jeans, back sweater, hard-framed gray glasses. Professional smile. She’d outlived fawning and perky.

“Coffee,” Deangela and Felix said at once. Felix nodded his deferral to Deangela.

“And water, please,” she said. “No ice.”

“Water,” echoed Felix. “With ice . . . and a slice of lemon, please.”

“Right back, kids,” she said, already spinning.

“You guys rest okay?” Doc asked.

“I did, thanks,” said Felix.

Deangela just nodded and looked in Doc’s face.

Doc leaned in and spoke quietly. The others leaned in, too. “So, what are we doin’?”

“I’m thinking it over,” she told Doc. “Somethings off. Either he didn’t go to work today, or someone else is driving his truck. Tracker’s already on the move.”

“What’s it mean?”

“Not sure. We spooked him. He’s trying to work things out.”

“Like what?” asked Felix.

She blinked four times in succession, as if that would corral thoughts. The waitress—name tag, Becky—came back with coffee and water.

“Lemme know when you’re ready to order, kids.” Felix smirked at being called a kid.

“I’m ready, I think,” said Felix, looking at the other two.

“Yep,” said Deangela. Doc nodded.

Deangela ordered the Colorado omelet with pancakes, Doc the Santa Fe skillet, and Felix the “Belly Buster,” a bear-sized assembly of well-seasoned and perfectly cooked arterial plaque. With pancakes. Autumn chill appetites. When Becky left, they picked it back up.

“Senator Theiner’s called him by now,” she said. “So, he knows someone knows. He may know it’s us. Sorry, Doc, but you were bait.”

“I knew that.”

“So, he has to cover his tracks,” said Deangela.

“Or eliminate the threat,” said Felix.

“There’s that, yeah,” she said, then hesitated. “That likely, you think?”

“Yes,” Doc and Felix said at once.

“Okay, so we stay careful. We still need something solid.”

“Like what?” asked Doc.

“Drugs? A lab location? Photographs of him with McKenzie or Valnicek. Targets of opportunity. We stay out of everyone’s way for now. Loiter somewhere in Skegum. Monitor the tracker. Watch for him to meet up with one of those two. Swoop in, get the shots, finalize Felix’s report?” She looked at Felix, and he nodded his assent. “I think by Wednesday, we should break off, though. For safety’s sake. Felix? You’re the client.”

“Agreed.”

“What’ll you do then?” asked Doc, looking at Deangela. “Go back to North Carolina?”

63

Jackson, Michigan

Haldane and McInnery scanned the web until they found a rifle range in Jackson County, then dropped by Jameson’s Guns—Shooting, Hunting, Reloading, Security, and Repairs. They purchased two .308 caliber Model 700 CDL SF Remington rifles, two Leopold Rifleman Scopes, two Flambeau gun cases, and four 20-round boxes of Federal Gold Medal Match 168-grain ammunition. All from a cranky, 250-pound motherfucker who’d missed a few memos about personal hygiene.

They booked the range at 12:30 so they’d have time to stop by Klavon’s Pizzeria for lunch first. Haldane wanted to go to International Dog House—a hot dog joint—and McInnery wanted AKA Sushi. Detroit-style pizza was the compromise.

The spent half an hour and ten rounds apiece getting on paper at 100 yards, another eight volleys getting in the X-ring, then a final hour-plus putting basic data on the scopes for 200, 300, and 400 yards. They screwed the caps on the scopes with 200-yards dialed in, packed the guns carefully in the cases, and headed back to Skegum.

McInnery drove back South on M-127, past woods and farms, with a polychrome of Fall foliage flickering to ground.

“Fuck,” said Haldane. “Fuckin’ Farrell. Four goddamn targets. The chance we find ’em in the same place at the same time is, what? Odds of the Orioles winnin’ the Series?”

“At least he didn’t put us on a clock. We do Felix and Halfrica, number one. Fermin, two. Cop, three. Agreed?

“Naw, yeah, that makes sense. Then we can blow this fuckin’ popsicle stand, let the hicks sort it out.”

*

They sat around one table in the Skegum Library, each with a laptop. Felix scrolled and tapped furiously. Deangela followed Correa’s GPS trace on her monitor. Doc scrolled through the news: killer floods in Nepal, jury selection to begin in Ahmaud Arbery case, Adele’s “Easy on Me” breaks some kind of online music record, Chicago Sky wins the WNBA championship.

*

Bagley brought his personal 2018 red Nissan Titan to Correa’s house and called a deputy for a ride back to his own place where he’d left the County’s Explorer.

Correa drove the Nissan into Adrian, to Black Swamp Equipment, a rental outfit off of Treat Street, where he picked up a Kubota min-excavator on a trailer. He drove north on Highway 54, taking a right on Phillps Highway, snaking between industrial farms and a handful of boutique places with no-till organics, goat products, and llamas.

Llamas, for fuck sake.

The sign marking Lenawee County had buckshot holes. The road improved marginally as he crossed the county line, the potholes more recently covered, the asphalt newer by at least five years. Lenawee’s two colleges, a tech school, and a hospital plumping up the tax base.

He turned truck and trailer onto the dirt drive at Jace’s abandoned farm. Turkey vultures slid overhead above the abandoned house. Starved little saplings amid an encroachment of quackgrass and Canadian thistle. Drooping clapboard gone gray, riddled with termites. Moss clawing through dematerialized shingles on a sagging roof. Glassless windows, some covered by rotten plywood, others open on a void, like the eyes of a skull. Broken doors. Dwelling inside, the spectral traces of anguish, desecration, and wrath.

The packed clay drive was worn into smooth twin ruts with shiny mud in the pits. It curved ahead for nearly a hundred yards, then dove into a wooded, six-acre hillock. Therein, the lab.

Seen from a distance, had it not been for the trees that concealed it, the building appeared to be a hunter’s cabin. Field stone foundation. Square log construction with steep, sheathed gables. Gas bottle. Grooved tin roof. Ceiling beams extending onto a front porch with two sets of antlers nailed to the outside wall on either side of a tattered American flag. Electrical line from the road, backed up by a generator sheltered in a short enclosure at the back of the house alongside the well-pump. Every window but the air conditioner was shielded from within by wooden-slat blinds. Keypad by the door. Not as easily seen were the Guardline motion detectors and the perimeter of tree-mounted camouflage security cameras.

The vehicle track circumnavigated the lab in a little cul-de-sac, tighter for the trailer than he’d anticipated, and Correa nearly jackknifed it.

“Fuck!” He was forced to advance Bagley’s truck onto a trail grown over with saplings. Now he’d scratched up the Sheriff’s personal ride. “Goddamnit!”

He got out, unchained the machine, slid out the race-ramps, and climbed into the excavator. He’d reassured Black Swamp with the lie that he knew how to operate it. Fastened the seat belt. Okay, a first step. Pulled those instructions out of a gray plastic sleeve. Looking around the interior. There were too many fucking handles sticking up everywhere.

It said to turn the key and start the machine. The excavator thrummed to life. Push the red handle forward and down. Whoa, that rolled up a console with two thick joysticks. Cool. He played with those. One made the excavator arm go up and down, the other forward and backward. Two more joysticks. Steering, one stick for each track. Push forward, track rolls forward, push backward, track rolls backward. Another lone joystick with a green button on top. Raise and lower the front shovel. Handle on the panel with a rabbit and a turtle. Engine fast, engine slow.

He almost came off the race-ramps when he edged the machine off the trailer, the incline feeling dangerously steep.

An hour later, he’d scratched open three holes, impatience growing with each attempt. He’d pictured a grave for six people: ten by ten feet and at least four feet deep. What he hadn’t anticipated were rocks and roots. In trying to pull them loose with the mini-excavator, he’d stood the machine up on its hind legs, tipped it precariously to the side, and tore the shit out of the driveway.

At last, he found ground that yielded. He was down to half a tank of gas by the time he’d finished; not a ten by ten by four, but more like a seven-foot circle coning down to around eight feet and a pool of ground water. He’d have to cram them in and cover them with a couple bags of lime. Note to self: buy lime.

64

October 19, 2021
Southeast Michigan

Xander put the six tarps in his black Honda Ridgeline and drove out, headlights cocooned around him in the thick, frigid fog. He stopped for a breakfast burrito at Wendy’s and arrived at the lab just after eight. The driveway was chewed up, with ragged holes between some trees, and one deep hole next to a heap of sandy clay. He called Correa.

“Someone’s been fuckin’ around with the lab.”

“That’s me, homie. It’s all good.”

“What’s with the holes?”

“Explain it when I get there. Whatcha doin’?”

“Just figured I’d tidy the place up. Make some product. Batch of goop, cuz we’re runnin’ low. Time you comin’ out today?”

“’Bout midday. Want some lunch?”

“Sure, thanks.”

“Jace comin’ with me, too. Then I’ll explain the hole.”

“’Kay, see ya then.”

Xander slid the key in for the deadbolt. Punched in the code, heard the snick, turned the lock. He went through, flipping on lights. Six overhead dual four-foot LEDs blazed the room as white as a surgical suite. White cabinets with gray countertops. Lab frames assembled like science fiction architecture. Rows of jars, black, brown, and clear, each labeled. Clean, white distillation tubs. Scales. Rubber tubes connecting filters to flasks to beakers. Burettes. Two hot plates. Bunsen burners. Racks of test tubes. Spatulas, measuring cylinders, glass funnels, thermometers, brushes, filter paper, pipettes, boiling flasks, droppers, and crucibles. Labeled plastic tubs. Safety apron, respirator, and goggles on wall hangers.

Fucking Sinaloans had nothing on him.

*

“Colin Powell died,” McInnery announced, holding the hotel door for Haldane. McInnery had shaving cream on his face.

“No shit.”

“Covid got him.”

“Fuckin’ pussy. What’s our cop doin’?”

“Still at his house.”

Haldane sat on McInnery’s bed. McInnery returned to the bathroom to finish his shave.

“I had this weird fuckin’ dream, man,” said Haldane. “You were in Panama. You said we could fly if we drank piss, and three little Chinese girls set fire to a horse.”

“You should Google that.”

“I did. Means I have prostrate cancer.”

“Means your next job will be at a used car lot sucking the farts out of old seat covers. I read that in a book.”

“I’m puttin’ yours on this dresser,” Haldane said. He unscrewed the little white bottle. Shook out two orange capsules—40 milligram Ritalin. He left one on the dresser and popped one into his mouth.

*

Jace press-checked his Colt .45. Seven in the mag, one in the pipe, hammer back. He raised up the thumb safety and pushed the Colt under his belt along the cleft of his back, pulling his sweatshirt down. He turned to check in the mirror.

His hair was pushed back with a pair of amber Oakley’s, even though it was foggy as fuck outside and storms were predicted by this afternoon. Style points. And eye protection. Three people were not leaving the property today—black bitch, beardy-man, and the beaner.

It was nearly ten. Pete was on his way. He and Pete, they were usually in sync; but this thing today . . . It made him uneasy. Not the killing part, but he was no more interested in going to prison than Pete, or the Sheriff either, if what Pete said was true. But the shit felt rushed. Half-assed. Too many if’s. If they followed him out, if they actually came onto the property and into the woods, if Bagley and Xander didn’t shit themselves. Then there was disposal. On Jace’s own property.

Gravel crunched outside. He looked out the window. Pete’s truck crept up the driveway.

*

Deangela had loaded their luggage two hours ago when she checked out. She’d slept fitfully, risen at four, and drank three cups of coffee.

She was still jittery when she picked up Doc at his house.

They converged in Felix’s room. She clipped her ragged nails super-short over a trash basket while Doc and Felix watched the laptop. Checkout was eleven. It was quarter to ten now. They’d find new rooms that evening—maybe in Dundee again. Everything depended on how things went with Correa.

“He’s movin’,” Felix said, face twitching and glued to the screen. “Let’s get on the road.”

Deangela drove. Felix spread himself across the back seat threaded between luggage, head propped on a coat. Doc monitored the laptop from the passenger seat.

Deangela turned onto M-50. Fog hung on in the low areas, the sky ashen and hushed.

“He’s headed out toward the prison.”

*

“Come on, shit!” she spat at a flatbed that pulled out in front of her and crawled along at 35 in a 50. “We shoulda stayed in Skegum.”

“Go easy,” Doc said. “We’ll catch ’im.”

She threw him a thankless glower.

*

“Motherfucker didn’t go to work again,” Haldane remarked. “He’s movin’, though.”

They waited in the Highlander, McInnery behind the wheel.

“Where?”

“East on Bee Highway.”

*

“He stopped,” Doc reported. They were headed south on 54 into town.

“Where?” she demanded.

“East of the prison, quarter mile.”

“Valnicek’s place. He’s with Valnicek. Damn, okay. Fish on! Felix?”

“Yes, my child.” That broke some tension. She chortled.

“Can you reach into that bag on the floor and dig out the camera with the big, chunky lens, please?”

“Hey,” called Doc. “Movin’ again.”

“Which way?”

“Back into town.”

“How far?”

“Less than a mile,” answered Doc. “Hold up. He’s comin’ back this way. Pull in at that 7-Eleven. He’s comin’ right at us.”

She whipped into a CVS parking lot, backed into a slot near the exit onto 54, and left the engine running. Felix sat in back holding the camera like a baby in his lap. Doc looked at the screen, up at the street, and back at the screen again.

“There he is,” she announced, looking south. The truck passed, northbound. “Valnicek’s with him.”

She put the Buick in gear.

*

“I’m not sayin’ it’s unnecessary,” pleaded Valnicek. “I’m sayin’ it ain’t tight.”

“What you mean, tight?” Correa demanded.

“I’m sayin’, we got a lawman involved? Not good, Pete. And three bodies. On my land. And Xander, man, Xander’s a chef, but he ain’t built for this other shit. He rescues spiders from his mama’s basement, man. And what if these people don’t show?”

“They’ll show, dude. They’re somewhere behind us right now. Promise. All you gotta do, man, is be a lookout. I’ll have the Winchester. I’ll do the shootin’. You’re just there in case they manage to back out. Hide at the edge of the woods. Call me when they head in. Tell me what they doin’.”

“So, Bagley’s doin’ what?”

“Bagley’s got a rifle, but I’m shootin’. Bagley drives my truck away, makes ’em think I’m gone. Then they feel safe to check the lab. They come in past you. You call me. They get inside, I drop ’em. Main thing, man, they don’t come out again. We lime ’em, wrap ’em, put ’em in the hole, more lime, cover ’em up. Job over.”

*

“They’re headin’ outa town,” said Haldane.

“Look up there,” said McInnery.

“Fuck me with a jackhammer. Is that—?”

“The Three Musketeers, yep.”

“Fuckin-A.”

*

“Where they takin’ us?” asked Felix.

“Lenawee County, looks of it,” said Doc.

They fell well back as the tracker put them onto a straight, flat stretch of Holbert Road with two miles of visibility. The fog was burning off fast.

“Hold up,” Doc said, watching the monitor. “They’re turnin’. Onto a property or somethin’. No road on this map.”

“It’s the Valnicek farm,” she said. “What’re they doin’ there?”

“We need to pull over,” said Felix.

“I know,” she said. “I’m looking.”

“It’s a farm?” Doc asked.

“Not really,” said Deangela, turning left onto a dirt-and-gravel track named Minor Road. She pulled tight to the side, put it in park, and set the brake. “I researched it. Abandoned for decades. Zillow shows a disintegrating old house.” She turned toward the back seat. “Felix, thoughts?”

“Lab?” he said. Doc looked up.

“My thoughts exactly,” she agreed. “Let’s break it off here, let Petey leave, and check it out. Where can we go to park, Doc?”

Felix laid back to the side. Doc consulted his screen. Deangela watched Doc.

An olive-green Highlander swept past on Holbert.

*

“Was that?”

“Yep,” answered Haldane. “Musketeers. Out in the boonies. Alone.”

“Reach in back,” ordered McInnery. “And hand me my earmuffs.”

Haldane stretched into the back seat. McInnery turned around in a farmhouse driveway. Haldane handed him his ear protection and slid on his own. A massive cultivator came bouncing down the road and passed them as they headed back. Then the road was empty again. Haldane reached behind his seat again, opened a case, and pulled out one of the Remingtons.

“They’re turning around,” said McInnery. He opened all the windows, chill air swirling in around them. He checked the mirror, pulled the Highlander up oblique along the road, and tugged on his ear protection. Three hundred yards more or less.

*

“What’s that car doin’?” hollered Doc. Deangela was halfway through a three-point turn.

Felix peered out his window. Saw the barrel snake out of the Highlander’s window.

“Shooters!” he said. “Get down.”

Deangela reversed hard, and aimed the Buick back down the dirt road, peering over the dash. Doc and Felix tried to get low.

The back windows exploded as she hit the gas. The car alarm howled. The Buick threw up a cloud of dust as they fishtailed away.

The second shot hit between the right-side doors and destroyed the hinge on Doc’s seat back, missing Doc’s ass by millimeters.

She was already doing sixty-plus, back tires swimming, when a third shot took out her headrest. Then, suddenly, they were screened by a patch of woods on the right, and the shooting stopped.

“Fuck!” she said, sitting up high again and letting off the gas until the wheels had a firm purchase. She turned off the alarm on the key fob, then looked in the mirror. Felix’s head was in the way.

“See ’em?” she asked.

“Not yet,” he said. “Wait, shit, here they come. Why you slowin’ down?”

“Trust me,” she said, dropping to fifty. Doc inspected the damage to the seat. “Where are they, Felix?”

“The dust is s-s-slowin’ ’em down s-some, but maybe two-three-h-h-hundred yards.”

“Doc,” Deangela said, preternaturally calm. “Set the GPS for Adrian.”

“What?”

“Just do it. Quick.” They passed through an intersection with a paved road. “Where, Felix?”

“Hun-hundred, fuck!”

“I got ’em,” she said, glancing at the mirror. “Get down,” she shouted, spotting an arm with a handgun.

One slug whacked the trunk, the other shattered the back glass.

She reached for the hand brake.

“Hold on,” she yelled, and pulled up the hand brake. The rear tires locked. She dialed the wheel left.

The tail swung around in a perfect 180. She dropped the brake, and the Highlander swept past. She jammed the accelerator and sped back toward the intersection, dialing another hand brake turn, 90 degrees right, then floored it again, screeching them down the paved road. The GPS lady was already talking. Felix was up again, looking back.

“They’re still t-trying to tuu-u-urn around,” he laughed nervously. Deangela was doing ninety-five.

“You were right about this car,” she told Doc with an adrenaline smile. “It’s got some giddy-up.”

“How’d you do that?” Doc asked, his eyes big.

“Baker Driving School, Rockingham, North Carolina,” she said. “Milo sent me.”

“God b-bless Milo,” said Felix, his face and arm jumping. “We g-got a lot to explain to H-h-ertz.”

*

“Fuuuuuuck!” shouted Haldane. The Buick was nowhere in sight.

*

Correa and Valnicek pulled up outside the lab. Bagley and Xander stood on the porch under the flag and antlers. Three shovels stuck out of the dirt pile.

Correa got out first, then Valnicek.

Bagley stepped off the porch and approached Correa. Xander went over to Valnicek.

“Six tarps,” said Bagely.

“What?”

“You had Xander get six tarps.”

“So?”

“You think six of us’ll fit in that hole?”

“Wait,” said Correa. Bagley unholstered his Glock 17 and shot Correa in the face. Correa dropped straight down, bounced, and tipped over, head pumping blood like a hose. Xander wrapped Valnicek up before he could reach for his .45.

“He was gonna kill us, Jace,” Xander said. “All of us.”

65

October 19, 2021
Adrian, Michigan

“Felix, you alright?” she called back.

“Spasms,” he grunted. “Feel like c-cramps.”

“What can we do?” asked Doc.

“You-you’re the medic.” Felix tried to smile.

The car was cold as hell, the chill flooding in through the shattered windows. The GPS lady had sent them down Holloway Road into Adrian. Now they were on a street called Broad. The voice said their destination was on the right. City Hall.

“Can you turn that off?” she asked Doc. She stayed straight onto a roundabout and turned right, toward the business district.

“Maybe pot,” grunted Felix.

“What?” Deangela and Doc said at once.

“Maybe D-doc c-can buy me a little . . . mmmh . . . marijuana.”

Less than a mile down Main, and they’d already passed three cannabis shops. Doc hit one called Amazing Budz, right by the Hampton. He danced around impatiently as they keyed all his data into a computer (state law), then bought a gram of actual marijuana—some purple shit called Masked Assassin—a little glass pipe, a lighter, and two packets of twenty gummies each.

Outside, Deangela sat very still in the car, looking straight ahead. When Doc came out, she pulled into a strip mall across Main Street where everything was boarded up except a Chinese buffet.

“You help him,” she said, getting out. “I can’t.”

The breeze snatched away puffs of white smoke that floated up from the interior, as she stood off at a distance wondering how they would deal with returning the rental, or getting another one . . . or explaining bullet holes.

“He’s done,” Doc called. He’d crammed into the back seat after the pot shop. The passenger seat was flopped back and leaning on a wasted, frail Felix. Unaccustomed to smoking, Felix was still coughing when she reached in for the keys and pressed the trunk release. The trunk door rose a couple of inches and caught.

“Shit,” she said to herself, yanking the trunk up against a metallic scrape. Bullets had drilled her suitcase, camera bag, and Felix’s duffle. She pulled up Felix’s black pea coat, her own tan Carhartt, and the Walmart blanket. The trunk’s metallic squeal set her teeth on edge as she closed it.

“I don’t have a coat that’ll fit you,” she said to Doc, handing him the blanket and Felix his pea jacket. “We’re gonna drop you back home. You don’t smoke?”

“Shit makes me anxious,” Doc replied. Turning to Felix: “Helping?”

“Yeah, maybe,” he said, grinning like an idiot between soft little coughs.

“Was that Pedro?” Doc asked Deangela.

“Farrell’s guys,” answered Felix, with another cough. “They were on us. Or the cop.” His speech was back.

“That means they’re still on us,” said Deangela. “Unless . . .” she thought for a moment. “I’ve checked for trackers twice a day.” Her eyes and mouth turned to circles. “They were on Petey! His phone maybe? Probably? Actually! Yeah, that makes sense. But they still wanna kill us.” Her eyes chased around apprehensively.

“Which means I shouldn’t go home,” concluded Doc.

“Damn,” she replied. “I gotta call Mama.”

“What?” said Felix. “Your mom?”

“Yep,” she said, circling the car, “but right now we need to eat. And think about what to do with this car.”

*

“Hey, Pick. Where the hell you been?”

“Nice to hear your voice too, Mama.”

“Been worried to death.”

“Sorry, but I’m gotta worry you some more. Can you take emergency leave?”

“Raass, Deangela Gillet Dale! What?”

*

“We have to file a police report on this car,” said Doc. “It’s in my name.”

“Shit, I figured. And that pops us back up on the system for Farrell’s crew.” she said. Felix was curled in the back seat, asleep. “We need to get our asses outa here. You know anyplace we can lay low for a day? My mom’s coming to get us tomorrow.”

“Your mom? Are we, like, thirteen?”

“Don’t be a smartass.”

“My cousin in Tecumseh, maybe. What then?”

“I think I have a plan. You like camping?”

*

“Morons! They fuckin’ got away?” Farrell was livid.

“Yeah, but the cop is dead,” said Haldane.

“You got him?”

“No, someone else did. No shit.”

“Fuck is goin’ on up there? This is a goddamn fiasco! Who killed the cop?”

“Who knows? We’re back on the trace when the Musketeers get away. We scare three assholes off outside some fancy fuckin’ dope lab. One has some kinda cop uniform on. They rip off through a field. We find Correa half buried in a deep-ass hole with his face shot off.”

“But you hit Halfrica’s car, right?”

“Shot hell outa that motherfucker. Might be casualties, but Halfrica was drivin’ like Hershel McGriff, so obviously we didn’t disable her. Bitch got skills.”

Farrell took a minute to think. “They’re gonna have to file a police report to dump that rental. Stand by, and I’ll call you the minute it hits the system. You ain’t done ’til they’re meat, hear?”

*

Skegum, Michigan

“Gildy?”

“Jason,” she answered, his name lit up on her screen.

“You know our little problem?”

“Not little, Jason.”

“Not even a problem, now.”

“What’re you saying?”

“Nothin’ you want said on the phone.”

66

Tecumseh, Michigan

“You got your passport,” she asked Felix.

“Don’t leave home without it,” he replied.

Dangerous dark clouds blistered the southwestern sky. Gusts of chill damp air troubled the trees and twirled the fallen leaves. Farah called Deangela back. She was already on her way. She’d arrive in Tecumseh at around midnight. Deangela had asked Farah to drop by Raleigh and pick up the Shamrock blankets, passports, and the “flyaway kit” from her house. “Put the cap on your truck,” she’d advised her mother. Cedar had come by to help Farah attach it.

They’d decided against involving Doc’s cousin, who had a husband and four kids, none of whom they were willing to put at risk. They went to Doc’s for clothes and his passport, then followed Doc to Ann Arbor. Doc drove the Buick. Deangela drove Doc’s truck after inspecting it for trackers. Doc had spoken to two skeptical police for more than an hour to explain how the car was vandalized at Hudson Lake State Park when he was off on a hike. He turned the car in to an equally skeptical rental agent, grateful that Felix had authorized the insurance. The police told him not to leave the state until they’d looked into the matter.

They hired an Uber and took Felix by a PNC Bank in Ann Arbor. He withdrew $5,000 more in cash. Then the Uber drove them to Doc’s.

They sat together now—5:10 in the afternoon—at the City Limits Diner again, sharing fried cheese sticks and chicken quesadillas and nursing cold drinks. Felix typed furiously on his laptop.

“It’s seven more hours after she gets here,” Deangela said. “Gonna be a long night.”

*

“Guess what.” said Farrell. McInnery and Haldane waited. “Remember when you put a rock on Mommy?”

“Mommy?” Haldane queried.

“Halfrica’s mother, the fuckin’ immigrant nurse.”

“Oh, yeah.”

“Well, the bitch is on the Pennsylvania Turnpike, headin’ west.”

“I’ll be damned,” blurted McInnery. “She’s coming for her baby.”

“Precisely. You are the luckiest two shit birds it’s ever been my displeasure to work with. You got the link, stay on ’em this time.”

“We doin’ the mom, too?” asked Haldane.

“Don’t make another hash of it.”

*

Ohio Turnpike
October 20, 2021

The storm battered Farah along the last stretch of I-80, headlights barely penetrating the downpour, wipers slapping off great sheets of water, wind feeling as if it were lifting the left side of the little S-10 off the road. She slowed to forty and didn’t reach the Ohio 109 exit until almost 1 a.m.

PART SEVEN

Almost anything is easier to get into than to get out of.

—Agnes Allen

67

Upper Peninsula, Michigan
October 20, 2021

Farah, Deangela, and Doc had taken turns at the wheel all night, Felix, with his height and infirmity, riding in the passenger seat, while the other non-drivers rode snugly together in the back. Farah took note of how Doc and Deangela napped with Deangela curled comfortably into his chest. Felix slept and twitched, waking only when they’d stopped for bathroom breaks at Clare and Grayling.

At the Newberry IGA, they secured a cartful of canned food, along with instant coffee, sugar, salt, pepper, creamer, sausage, eggs, brown bread, butter, onions, potatoes, three (more) Monster energy drinks, a six-pack each of root beer, Vernor’s ginger ale, and Heineken, and a bag of ice. It was just past nine in the morning and the storm had left a warm front in its wake. It was nearly sixty-five degrees at 9:10 in the morning. They loaded their purchases and headed north on M-123.

*

“They’re north of Newberry on Michigan-one-twenty-three. We’re only five minutes behind them,” reported McInnery.

“The fuck are they doin’ all the way up there?” said Farrell. “Goin’ to Canada?”

“No,” McInnery replied, “if that were the case, they’d’ve stayed straight on seventy-five to Sault Sainte Marie.”

“Can you catch ’em?”

“We will. But understand, we’ve passed two state troopers in the last half an hour. This place is a Delaware-sized speed trap. With moose crossings.”

“Remote?”

“Like Siberia in some places.”

“Well, that’s good. Take ’em out.”

“Wait, the tracker says they’re turning onto some dirt trail. Widgeon Road? We may be in business.”

*

Deangela cut the engine and got out with the keys at the Luce Sportsmen Hunting Club gate.

Inside the truck, Felix turned around to face Farah.

“She said we have no coverage here?”

“No satellite. Camp has a generator, so we can keep ya computer charged.”

“So, no GPS, no phones?”

“Correct.”

He’d eaten two cannabis gummies when they left the IGA. He was talkative.

“She comes up here alone? Don’t you worry?”

“Regular Daniel Boone, that one. She chops wood and plays with snakes. Theodora teach her how to eat weeds. I worry when she’s with you.”

“Touché!”

Deangela remounted, started the truck again, drove through, cut the engine, and got out to lock the gate again. She did not sign in.

“How far?” asked Doc.

“Maybe four miles,” said Farah. “Feel like ten. Road rough as a crocodile.”

“Rougher than the one we just got off?” What had started out as a decent dirt road, carpeted with orange leaves that danced in their wake, had become Widgeon Trail, a bone rattler.

“You’ll see,” Farah gave him an impish smile.

Deangela resumed the drive. Once she’d crossed an alarmingly old and narrow wooden bridge just past the gate, the truck shot forward, Deangela now possessed with purpose, eyes hard, jaw set, strong hands commanding the wheel and stick shift. She gunned through obstacles, using speed to skitter along the washboards and jump the mudholes. She rode out fishtails, slalomed around potholes, ducked overhanging branches, caught air occasionally as she leapt the truck over little rises, then slowed to a crawl where swamp water inundated the entire trail, only to jam the gas again as she caught gears, never once resorting to four-wheel drive. Felix held the dash and the door grip. Doc held the grip and the back of Deangela’s seat. Farah grinned and rode with the motion like a black-diamond skier on the moguls.

By the time they reached the switchback onto the Shamrock “driveway,” all four were wide awake.

She cut the motor. They stepped out and stretched. Deangela put the truck radio on a Sault Sainte Marie FM station and left her door open to hear the ten o’clock “top of the hour” weather report. Record highs today and tomorrow, with more storms and a cold front behind that.

“Thirty years ago, they be snow on the ground b’now,” remarked Farah.

Deangela nodded. She reached in and switched off the radio. Removed the keys. Flipped the door shut. Opened the cabin. Farah raised the shell door, dropped the tailgate, and started dragging things out of the bed.

The men helped transfer the various items inside.

Deangela and Farah started organizing the camp, Farah on the inside, and Deangela placing the cooler in the spring house and carrying water up to the cabin, setting up a dishwashing station, and collecting pitch pine (lighter knot, Theodora had called it), tinder, kindling, and damp wood for the campfire. Farah opened the windows to air out. Instructed the men on the toilet arrangements, showing them the portable toilet seat and the little surplus entrenching tool for catholes. Arranged the bunks, camp pillows, and blankets—which practically filled the room. When all was done, she turned on the gas to boil a pot of water.

“I don’t need any more caffeine,” said Doc, to which Felix nodded.

“It’s chamomile tea,” she said. “Help ya rest.”

Which it did. By eleven o’clock that morning, all four, feeling safe for the first time in many hours, stretched out unconscious on top of the cots.

*

Newberry

“We’ve run into a problem,” McInnery told Farrell.

“You lost ’em again?”

“Not exactly.”

“Well, what the fuck exactly?”

“The GPS went down.”

“Fuck you mean?”

“There’s a big dead zone for satellite coverage here. They drove right into it.”

“Dead zone?”

“Yeah, but they came here . . . we’re back in a town called Newberry . . . they came here for some reason. It’s not random. There’s family here or something. They drove straight to someplace out there. We’re in front of the courthouse now. You need to look up surnames for their relatives. While we wait, we’ll run a property check for Dales in Luce County. In a way, I think this could be perfect.”

“How?”

“If they’re hiding here and we find them, it’s very remote. It’s all forests and swamps and rivers and lakes. No witnesses, no bodies. Its grouse season here. We can get two out-of-state licenses, two shotguns, and two ATV’s.”

“Well, fuckin’ find ’em then.”

*

Shamrock Camp

Night claimed the camp quickly. That’s how it was, this far from cities and electricity.

They’d awakened, one at a time between four and five. Meandered around the camp while Deangela made buttery fry-toast and heated three large cans of tomato soup on the gas stove. Deangela had constructed a campfire. Tent of lighter knot on bottom, wrapped in used tissues and paper towels, which dried the tinder, which dried the kindling, which dried the small wood, then two large branches of deadfall arching over the pit.

One flick of the lighter, and the pit was ablaze within ten minutes.

The fire crackled and snapped now, Farah and Felix in two folding camp chairs, Deangela and Doc on a long, lichen-covered, wooden bench that wobbled when they moved. The light flickered in their faces. Empty plates, bowls, and cans were scattered around their feet. Smoke whipped and eddied, and they ducked and squinted by turns. Crickets, reawaked by the warm weather, keened out of the surrounding blackness. Farah watched Doc and Deangela, sitting together on the bench, their faces flittering in the dance of firelight. Felix was dozy again with cannabis.

Above them, starlight. Clouds and rivers and lanterns of stars, Venus throbbing and fervent in the southern treetops.

“What’s that,” asked Felix at a sudden chorus of yips and howls to the north.

“Coyotes, teachin’ they pups to hunt,” replied Farah.

“I’ll run the generator in the morning,” said Deangela. “We can charge phones. How much more you need to write, Felix?”

“Still got your flash drive?” She nodded. “Give me two more hours, and we’ll update it. You figure out a way yet to get it to press?”

“Think so,” she said.

“Once it’s out, there’s no incentive for them to stay on our asses.”

“Farrell?”

“Farrell’ll stay at it. He hates me. I’m gonna expose his little outfit, too. But he’s a fuckin’ vampire. Daylight’ll reduce him to ashes.”

The fire popped. Sparks jumped and chased each other into the darkness.

68

Shamrock Camp
October 21, 2021

The wind kicked up during the night, followed by a passing spatter of rain. As the sky cleared, the temperature fell into the mid-forties.

At 7:30 in the morning, it was still twilight. Deangela, wearing her coat and ball cap, squatted next to the fire pit, tearing strips off a copy of the Durham Sun she found in Farah’s truck. The wood was damp, even under the tarp she’d thrown over it the night before. She made a pile of the newspaper strips, sliced off splinters of lighter knot with a hatchet, and reconstructed the wood.

A rustle. She looked up. Farah ambled down to her, a steaming cup in each hand.

“Thanks,” she told her mother, taking the coffee. “Didn’t wanna wake y’all.”

Farah picked up a section of newspaper and laid it on the wobbly bench so she wouldn’t get her bottom wet. She wore Danner hiking boots, snug jeans revealing muscular legs, a heavy brown sweater, and a red stocking cap. Her breath made steam.

Deangela reached into her pit architecture with a lighter and flicked.

The paper caught fire. The lighter knot crackled. The twigs ignited. The kindling caught. Deangela crossed herself.

Farah grinned.

“This man, Felix.”

“Yeah?” Deangela wiped a place on the bench and sat directly on the damp spot next to her mother. Her hands were stained with ash and soot.

“He tellin’ the truth?”

“He is.”

“How ya feel about that?”

Deangela took a sip of coffee before answering.

“Not sure. A little mad at Daddy? Confused?”

“Ya stir the mud, can ya stand the scent?” Belizean wisdom. “Big pedestal ya daddy stand on.”

“You loved him, too.”

“Me love the man, not worship ’im.”

“Even after he left?”

“Cho, Pick! He woke up with his hands on me throat. Thought he was gonna kill me. I was glad he left.”

“But you all . . . well, the conjugal visits?”

“Sweetbread, that was sex. Good sex.”

“Whoa! TMI!”

“No, a good thing! Ya daddy and me, we was electric. First time I laid eyes on the man, somethin in me holla, ‘Mine!’ And we were friends, Pick. We were young and we were friends. He was this gentle, thoughtful man, then the Army changed him. Make him hard. And they was somethin’ already in ’im took him to it. I loved the gentle man.” She winked. “And I loved our sex.” Deangela rolled her eyes. “A lot. He was gentle with that, too. Everyone got more than one person inside ’em, Pick.”

“He killed a man.”

“He kill several men, De. He was a soldier.”

“No, I mean here, in the US, out in California.”

“How ya know that? Why?”

“No lo se. Seems pretty sure, though. When he was studying Farsi. He was being investigated when he was killed.”

“When he was goin’ mad?”

“Yeah.” She reached down. Placed four wrist-sized sticks on the blaze. “Why’d he stay? In the Army?”

“Why anyone do anything? Men especially, they got a jumbie whisper in they head. . . tell ’em pull the reaper’s tail, prove a thing can’t be proven.”

“Some of them walk away.”

“Ya daddy not a walk-away man.”

“Doc did.”

Farah looked up at her daughter.

“Speak of the devil,” said Deangela.

Doc headed down the slope, looking rumpled and sleepy. Waved as he approached, a camp chair hanging off one hand.

“No coffee?” asked Farah.

“Felix has some water on.” He wore his hoodie under the denim jacket, hair sticking up in every direction, lip and chin decorated with scanty beard stubble. Dropped the chair. Sat. Hugged himself against the chill.

Deangela stood. She squinted, dodging the sparks and smoke, and positioned more wood on the fire.

“Y’all wanna clean up later,” she said to Doc, “there’s a little bath cubicle in the back. The drain works. Bucket and a cup, I’m afraid, so, peasant bath. We can boil a pot of water to add to the bucket so you don’t get hypothermia.” She smiled.

“Sounds good,” said Doc. “Did a few peasant baths in the Army. Without the boiled water.” He looked up. “There he is now.”

They turned to see Felix walking carefully down the slope with two steaming cups, right hand trembling and dripping hot coffee.

“Bonjour à tous,” he called down.

“Sleep well?” inquired Deangela.

“Like a rock,” he said, handing Doc his coffee. “Best sleep I’ve had I years.”

“Forest air,” explained Farah, “and no electricity. Electricity mess with ya brain.”

Deangela headed up the slope to the cabin.

“That your medical training?” he grinned at Farah.

“Hossmann and Hermann, two thousand two, ‘Biological effects of electromagnetic radiation’.”

“Wow,” he said and meant it. “I see where Deangela gets her smarts.”

Doc stood.

“Sit,” he ordered Felix, giving him his chair.

“I’m okay.”

“Please, sit.”

Felix complied, nodding his gratitude. Doc went over to sit next to Farah on the bench.

Deangela tramped back down with another camp chair.

“I’ll work on some breakfast in a few,” she said. She unfolded the chair and sat between Doc and Felix. “Everyone alright with sausage, eggs, and fried toast?”

They murmured assent.

A sudden whoosh ripped past in the swamp behind them. A great black shadow flickered through the trees and was gone.

“What was that?” asked Doc.

“Gray owl,” answered Deangela. “Damn.”

“What?” asked Farah.

“They should’ve migrated by now.”

*

Newberry, Michigan

The old courthouse was a work of art. Bright colors. Golden cupola. A collection of one-of-a-kind windows. Red hand-cut stone with blue gingerbread soffits. A museum now, apparently.

The new Luce County courthouse opened at eight. The government sign, of course, featured a bull moose. Architecture—late bureaucratic brutal, approved by Stalin. Windows like prison slots. Dead gray brick.

McInnery was waiting when they opened the doors. When confronted by an aging phlegmatic deputy who’d never missed a meal, McInnery presented his DOD badge. The deputy stared silently at the badge for a what seemed minutes. Unimpressed, he told McInnery he’d still have to empty his pockets, take off his belt, and drop all metal items, including his phone, in the tray before stepping through the scanner. This was Luce County, not Washington DC. At least McInnery had the foresight to leave his sidearm in the car.

The friendly clerk who supervised the property records looked like someone’s aunt. Full-figured in a floral dress and full-featured. Large green eyes, magnified by tortoise shell glasses, a broad nose, full lips, and a thick halo of blonde hair.

“Just Dales, right?”

“Yes ma’am.”

She tapped and moused a computer, then turned to disappear behind a door. When she came back, she held one sheet.

“Only one I can find. Farah Dale.”

“Perfect, ma’am. May I see?”

“Surely.”

“How do I find this on a map?”

“Let me see, sir.” She studied the coordinates for a few seconds, then went back to tapping and mousing. Then she disappeared again.

When she came back, she had a folded county map. She opened it and looked back and forth between map and screen.

“Okay,” she said after a fashion. “This here,” she pointed at a spot on the simple black-and-white line-map, “is Widgeon Road.” He knew this much, but was surprised when she pronounced it WEE-jun. “Right here, in about two miles, you turn right and it becomes Widgeon Trail. County maintenance ends right here where it crosses into the club. Private property the rest of the way. Your lady’s property is inside the club property, all the way up here.”

“Where can I contact this Sportsmans Club?”

“Sir, I don’t know about that. It’s my understanding, though, that the club has security gates at each end of the trail.”

He badged her and asked, “Is there any other way in? It’s a national security matter.”

Her friendliness crashed down like a controlled demolition. These people really didn’t trust the federal government.

“National security,” eyebrows skeptically arched, “in the middle of Lake Superior Forest.”

“Yes, ma’am. How about this here, Stewart Trail?”

“Sir, you still need to contact the club. That’s their property. And those trails are not maintained. This map is thirty years old. Should I call the deputy to help you out?”

“No, that’s alright. I’m sorry. You’ve been very helpful. May I keep this map?”

“Four dollars, sir.”

69

Shamrock Camp
October 21,2021

After breakfast, Deangela and Doc dragged the heavy old Honda generator from the back storage room through the tiny hall and kitchen and out the front door. It banged both wooden steps coming down. She twisted herself under the cabin to retrieve the five-gallon gas can. Doc watched the whole procedure with great interest.

She crossed herself, only partly out of humor, after she filled the tank. Flipped on the choke. Pumped the primer ten times and gave the starter cord a snappy muscular pull. The motor, lazy from disuse, responded with a seven-syllable chug. On the second try, it reluctantly caught and stayed, working itself into a loud steady growl. When the sound stuttered, she flipped the switch from ‘choke’ to ‘run,’ and the generator sang.

“Yes!” Doc said and gave a little fist pump. She grinned proudly at him.

She carried a coiled green hundred-foot power cord with four jacks out of the back storage room. Within minutes, Felix, who’d eaten a gummy after breakfast to suppress any spasms, sat on the side of his cot and typed into his laptop. The other three outlets charged phones.

Farah came ambling back from the woods with the toilet seat and a roll of paper, Doc and Deangela politely ignoring her.

*

Farah moved fallen leaves from the pile of forty-two lake stones where her husband’s ashes lay. Deangela, Doc, and Felix stood back by the Mothertree watching.

“Some people come by to say hi, Lover,” she said quietly. Deangela sniffled. Doc took one of her hands and Felix took the other.

*

After visiting the tree and her father’s ashes, Deangela busied herself rekindling the fire. It was drifting late into the afternoon.

The decision had been collectively taken to return the following day and quickly disseminate their reports to the press and the Michigan authorities. They’d break camp after the noon meal and head to the Soo, Canada-side. There they’d make the necessary calls and send documents. They’d stay for at least three days until publication was a fait accompli in the hope that they’d neutralized any reason to murder them, and to put Farrell’s brood of vipers on its back foot.

*

Near Tahquamenon Falls, Michigan

The guy that rented rec-vehicles north of Tahquamenon was a championship asshole. Arthur and Harry had to listen while the greasy fat bastard in filthy coveralls yelled a long cantankerous harangue—on the rules of operation, maintenance, terms of agreement, penalties, hazards, and provisions of insurance—over a television in the shop running Gran Torino at 90 decibels.

They rented a trailer with two black-and-yellow Can-Am Outlander XTs that looked like big bumblebees. Only then did they realize they had no trailer-hitch receptacle on the Highlander. They told the prick to hold the ATVs. He was serving up yet another unwelcome disposition on foreign cars, when Harry showed his DOD creds as he put the deposit on a card just to shut the motherfucker up.

By the time they reached Sault Sainte Marie to exchange vehicles, it was past noon. They took a brawny yellow Suzuki Jimmy they’d chosen just to piss off the dickhead, ensuring it had a 1 ¾ inch ball hitch.

The dickhead scowled at it when they returned at quarter past three.

It was too late to start now, so they headed back to Newberry. Rented two rooms at the Best Value Inn and went to Joshua James Bar and Grill for beer, burgers, and fried pickle spears, in the company of beer-swilling men and women in flannel and sweaters, watching the Dodgers strip the hide off of the Braves on a giant flatscreen TV.

70

Shamrock Camp

Felix had lain down in mid-afternoon with a sedative. In spite of the cannabis home remedy, the tremors returned along his right side along with another crying jag. At dusk, when he rose again, his nerves had settled, and he smelled canned beef stew, still on the stove. He looked out the back window and saw the other three sitting by the firepit with empty bowls and cups on the ground next to soft drink cans. Deangela and Doc were setting marshmallows afire on the ends of long sticks.

Felix held his hand above the stew. It was cold, but he scooped out a bowlful anyway and stuck a spoon in it. He poured spring water into a big plastic glass, collected his meal, and carried it to the fire to join the others. Two camp chairs were thoughtfully sat out, an empty one for him. Farah was sunken into one, semi-reclined, chin on her chest, eyes on Doc and Deangela, who sat together cremating the marshmallows, the plastic bagful on the sandy ground in front of them.

“Doin’ better?” Farah asked, eyes still on the couple.

“I am, thanks,” Felix answered, setting his bowl and glass carefully next to his chair. “Marshmallows.”

“Want one?” asked Deangela, blowing out the flame and standing.

“Sure,” he said.

“Just bite it off. Your hands’ll get all sticky.”

He obeyed.

“Mmm, I like ’em burnt.”

“Me, too,” chimed Doc, eating another.

“Me three,” Deangela said, setting her stick on the bench and walking into the dark.

“Where ya go?” Farah asked Deangela.

“Get Felix a marshmallow stick,” Deangela explained, unholstering her Leatherman.

Felix dug in to his cold stew.

By seven-thirty, it was dark. The fronts of them formed a bright border around the blaze. The forest buzzed. Far off, an owl screeched. The coyotes across the river tuned up. The four of them stared hypnotically into the flames and embers. All together. Each alone.

“Who’s Farrell?” asked Doc, breaking the concord.

Felix took a long breath.

“Back when tyrannosaurs roamed Montana,” he began, “I was a young pup making my first foray abroad as a member of Seventh Special Forces Group. Nineteen-eighty-four, if I recall correctly. I was a communications guy, and they’d assigned me to a Mobile Training Team, or that’s what they called it. I was posted to El Salvador, where I met another Felix. Rodriguez. Agency operator at Ilopango Airport. Neck deep in the cross transit of money, weapons, and cocaine in support of our little covert, and might I add, highly illegal, war against the Sandinistas. I met ’im. Didn’t work directly for ’im. You can look the guy up. Smart, amoral, bloodthirsty, balls big as grapefruits. Started out a rich boy in Havana before Fidel. One of Rodriguez’s guys was a former-Delta psychopath named Montgomery Farrell. He was like a liaison between Rodriguez and the US Embassy in San Sal. I forget the Ambassador’s name, a drunk. Pickering maybe? At any rate, Monty Farrell kind of operated between the lines. A mini-MilGroup working with Salvadoran paramilitaries. Death squads, if you like. Didn’t realize it at the time, my role being peripherally and temporarily supportive. Training some very questionable Salvadorans on new commo equipment. And Farrell was still in the Army. I discovered this a few years later when I myself migrated under the Joint Special Operatoins Command umbrella. I had the misfortune of working more directly with Farrell during Desert Storm, when he was assigned as an interrogator. This was before torture was re-legalized under Bush, but let’s just say Farrell had a taste for the suffering of others. Last I hear, he retires around ninety-five, when I’m over at Delta before I went the OCS route. Farrell disappears. From my view at least. Pops up again after nine-eleven right in the middle of the whole [air quotes] rendition thing. Once an inquisitor always an inquisitor. Anyway, he drops off my radar again for a while when Bush leaves, then, bang, here he is again in Afghanistan running some spooky shit between JSOC [he pronounced it jay-sock] and the Afghanis. Remember the bomb that killed the French reporter, Villeneuve?”

Doc nodded.

“I’m ninety percent sure that was coordinated by Monty Farrell.”

“Wow.”

“Yeah, so, Trump rolls in in twenty-seventeen. He’s a very impressionable guy. They say con-men make the easiest marks cuz they think they’re the smartest guys in the room. He doesn’t study things. Doesn’t even read his memos. He has this cartoonish idea of how military and covert operations work, which he gets mostly from movies and shit. If Trump likes you, it’s because you match his idea of something from the movies. Then he’ll buy whatever bullshit you got to sell.” Farah made noise somewhere between a chortle and a grunt. “I mean, Mike Flynn? Guy’s crazy as a bag of cats.” Doc and Deangela laughed. “Farrell, as I understand it, he gets an audience with the Carnival Barker in Chief, and presto-change-o, Farrell has authorization to start this covert DOD thing, operating inside the US, contra the Posse Comitatus Act, to seal whatever they deem to be security leaks. Like the assassination of journalists, only on domestic soil. And so, here we are, with two of his hooligans roamin’ Michigan and shootin’ holes in our cars.”

The fire crackled. Doc tossed on two more pieces of wood. Deangela adjusted the flame and coals with a length of dry branch.

After a few minutes of companionable silence, Doc spoke. “When I’m in the Q-Course,” he said, eyes turning to him, “and we do our medical training, I always imagine myself on HCAs, humanitarian-civic-action missions. I’m ministering to grateful poor people’s children. That’s how I get through goat-lab. We wound, horribly, a couple hundred goats, then we treat the wounds. Then kill the goats. Because this allows us to improve and save human life. Everyone rationalizes. Some of the guys, they just decide they hate goats so it’s easier. I don’t know how now, but I even find a way to ignore why they make each of us name two goats that we take care of each day, mine are Cheech and Chong,” he snickered, “then in the last couple weeks, the ones we name are the ones we have to shoot to learn gunshot wound protocols.”

“Shit,” muttered Deangela. Daddy was a medic.

“I get to Afghanistan, we aren’t allowed anywhere near civilians, not even the kids.”

They sit quietly for a time, letting the story dissipate.

“You remember, Mama,” said Deangela, “when we saw the skunk?” Farah chuckled at the memory. “We were all three on the river, and you and I are bangin’. Daddy’s catching nada, and we’re putting fish in the creel, so he splashes ahead to beat us to the next hole and falls. His waders filled with water, and oh my God the language, and we’re laughing, so we all got out on the bank. Show of solidarity with the fishless wet wretch.” She’s talking to everyone now, Doc and Felix smiling, too. “He empties his waders, and we decide to eat. We dig the sandwiches out of our vest . . . Jesus, he made some killer sandwiches, cabbage instead of lettuce, remember . . . and just as we’re about to feed, along comes this enormous skunk. I mean, the size of a pig, this thing, and he’s just strolling along toward us like he’s deaf or something, and we all freeze. He just keeps coming, and we’re all thinking we’re about to get sprayed . . . that’s no joke, getting skunk sprayed . . . and the thing stops, I mean, no more than ten feet away. And it just stares at us. We’re holding our breaths, no idea what to do, and just like that, the skunk turns around . . . now we know we’re shit out of luck . . . and it just ambles back the way it came.”

Farah laughed aloud and added, “A.D. says, ‘At least it wasn’t a deaf bear.’”

“What happens if you get sprayed,” asked Doc.

“Ya got to throw away ya clothes,” she grabbed Felix by the arm, “wash ya ass in baking soda three four times, sleep in the yard for a week, then immigrate.”

This provoked a fresh bout of laughter that drifted back as the sound of the fire took over the conversation again.

Doc and Deangela sat with their hips and shoulders together, feeling one another shift as they poked at the fire. She looked up and pointed a smoking stake at the sky.

“Animals up there,” she said. “Lacerta, the lizard. Camelopardis, the giraffe. Aires, the ram. Big bear, little bear.” They looked up, not sure where she pointed. “Draco, the dragon, slain by Athena. Badass lady, her. Pegasus, there. His father, not a horse, was Poseidon. His mother was Gorgon Medusa, woman with a head full of snakes. Whole story up there. Over there, that’s Cepheus, a woman who turned into a man, and that one, the lazy W, that’s Cassiopeia, Cepheus’s wife. Their daughter, right there, that’s Andromeda, consort of that one, Perseus. Perseus kills Medusa to save Andromeda. More drama than the Russian Royal family, these mythic folks.”

Doc stood. Deangela looked up with a spurt of disquiet.

He headed back to the cabin. Then they saw the headlamp as Doc walked down to the spring house. He returned with three beers and a root beer. Put the headlamp on the bench. He gave Deangela the root beer, passed a Heineken each to Felix and Farah, and sat back alongside Deangela, more tightly than before. She pressed her side into his warmth. Felix looked back at the stars. Farah watched her daughter with this calloused, temperate, and vulnerable little man.

71

Luce County, Michigan
October 22, 2021

“The fuck,” shouted Haldane above the rumble of the ATVs, his breath visible in the morning cold. “That’s a swamp down there.”

On either side of the Luce Club gate the ground fell steeply down through shadowy deadfall and into leaf-carpeted water. Nothing that could be negotiated by their Outlanders, to which were strapped bundles with rifles, shotguns, a jug of water apiece, granola bars, and boiled eggs they’d lifted from the hotel breakfast bar. They’d both dressed like hunters, or their approximation of such, in brand-new and overpriced duds from a small, family-run sporting goods store in Newberry. Matching duck boots, tree-camouflage coveralls, sidearms underneath, and hooded Thinsulate jackets. They looked like Cincinnati doctors on a vacation cosplay.

McInnery shut off his motor. Haldane followed suit. McInnery extracted the folded map from his inner breast pocket. Haldane dismounted and looked over his shoulder.

“There are perhaps two other ways,” said McInnery, pointing at the map. “Up here, past Pine Stump Junction and slipping through the club property. But there may be another gate. Or over here, where if there is a gate, it’s a hundred yards from their camp. That route means we have to go all the way around and up County five-hundred, then west on dirt road four-fourteen to dirt road four-thirty-five until it ends. The car and trailer will get us this far down four-thirty-five where we’re still on state property. This trail here ends on Widgeon Trail, stone’s throw from our targets. If they’re even there.”

“They’re there. Better fuckin’ be. I vote the five-hundred. No witnesses from the club.”

“Agreed. Let’s head back to the trailer.”

*

“I’m gettin’ more eggs. Anyone need anything?” asked Deangela, heading back into the kitchenette.

The other three mumbled negatives, mouths already full of scrambled eggs, sausage, skillet toast, and fried potatoes with onions. Doc had volunteered as this morning’s cook, and he didn’t disappoint. Bachelor skills.

They were bundled up on the edge of their bunks in the cabin, food perched on their laps, coffee cups and plastic glasses of water by their feet. Everyone else was in coats, and Doc had put three layers under his jacket. The temperature outside was 39 degrees. Cooking and body heat drove the interior up to around 50. Their breaths were still visible. Behind them on the cots were heaps of blankets and pillows.

Felix had had a bad night. Tremors and weeping near midnight in spite of his self-medication experiment. Almost nine o’clock now, and the plan was to break camp immediately after the noon meal and drive to the Soo. As soon as the press had their teeth into the reports, they’d risk crossing back and returning to their homes—Farah and Deangela to North Carolina, Felix to Tennessee, and Doc to Tecumseh.

Doc was quiet all morning. His eyes followed Deangela dejectedly, and Farah’s eyes followed him. Felix was drawn into himself like someone trying to evade pain by not moving. Deangela used activity for avoidance, collecting the dishes and packing, her eyes stilldrawn surreptitiously to Doc. Their exigent family was within view of its own decomposition. Outside, it was shaping up to be a gray day. They were cold and sooty and their clothes needed a wash, and still, each of them, in his or her own way, did not want to leave this clearing in the forest.

They heard a buzz in the distance and all alerted.

It approached the cabin from the south, growing louder by the moment. They scrambled. Deangela shouldered the “flyaway kit.” Felix jammed his computer into its waterproof case. Farah snatched the vehicle keys, then thought about it and dropped them back on the camp table. Doc grabbed a jug of water.

The buzz became a roar that broke open the forest. ATVs, not one, not two, but many. A parade of four-wheelers flickered past through the trees, headed for the driveway switchback. The four of them stopped what they were doing. Perhaps a dozen mounts, with dads, moms, and kids all helmeted and colorfully appointed. Some kind of outing, and the parade came pouring into the Shamrock clearing in front of the cabin where they parked in a cluster, kids dismounting first. The arrivals gawped at this baffling huddle of two black women, a Latino, and a ghost from the Hatfield-McCoy war.

“Hi,” said one of the kids, taking off her helmet. A chubby girl of around eight with small bright eyes and red hair.

“Hi,” Doc said, and smiled at her. The ice was broken.

An exchange of words and they ascertained, after establishing that Deangela and Farah were the owners, that the club told them this was where the oldest white pine in Michigan was, and they’d come to see it.

Farah played the role of tour guide and led the convocation of twenty-one down the trail to the Mothertree, her guests both confused and fascinated by the West Indian accent. They were invited afterward to fill water bottles if they wished, which the adults declined, but the kids accepted out of curiosity about the spring house, which Deangela showed them. Felix ad-libbed a lie about their presence, brief but elaborate: they were on an annual sojourn by two veterans who knew Deangela’s father to visit his ashes.

Then, as suddenly as they’d shown, the engines clamored again. The parade re-helmeted and mounted. The file disappeared back along the route from where they came, the machine sounds dissolving back into the boreal expanse.

“Scared the shit outa me,” declared Farah.

*

The Isuzu and trailer barely fit into the sandy half-moon turnout along Homestead Trail. Their GPS found a satellite again along County 500, then lost it just before they reached the East Branch Bridge on County Road 414, in a burnt, flat expanse of ferns and saplings where the 2012 Duck Lake fire had ravaged the place. They realized they missed their turn. Their phones were useless.

They stopped on Homestead Road, a glorified fire trail really, and left a photocopy of their out-of-state hunting licenses on the dash, visible to any Sheriff, game warden, or nosy passerby. They headed south on the Outlanders at just past ten in the morning. The temperature was dropping fast. Turkey vultures circled in the west like dark angels. The sky was low and leaden, the air motionless as a crouching cat.

*

Nearly two miles in, they passed a steep, narrow trail that dropped steeply away to their left. McInnery beeped his horn to stop Haldane, then pulled up alongside.

“I think that was it back there,” he explained.

Haldane studied his map again.

“Maybe so.”

*

Spurred to action by the tree-tourist scare, they packed quickly. Felix burned four flash drives, one for each in little plastic waterproof bags, which they secured in their pockets. He then wiped the computer clean.

“Here,” he said, holding out a brick of banknotes to Deangela. “Put this money in the runaway kit.”

“You hold it,” she said.

“No, it’s better you do. Really.”

While she sealed the bills in a plastic bag and pushed them into the pack, they heard motors again. To the north this time.

*

Haldane and McInnery pulled up into a large clearing with a bunkhouse that could sleep a dozen people, an outhouse, a gas shower, and a huge firepit with a grill.

“There’s no tracks in here but ours,” said Haldane.

“We need to go back to that last junction and head left.”

“Let’s go.”

72

“That’s over by Douglas Malcolm’s lodge,” said Deangela. Farah nodded her agreement.

“What do we do?” asked Doc.

Deangela took off at a dead run down the driveway, hearing the motors rev again. She spotted the red club gate a hundred yards or so to the north. There they were. Two ATVs turning away from the Douglas place and toward the gate. She ran back, full bore, and arrived panting.

“Grab some coats, we gotta run.”

“It’s them?” asked Felix.

“Yes, we have to run. East. Through the woods.”

“We take the truck,” said Doc.

“They’re on ATVs. they’ll catch us at the gate. We have to go. Now!”

“I’ll stay,” said Felix.

“You will not!” cried Farah.

“I’ll slow you down,” he said. “I can hide over there in the woods. Go! Go!”

Deangela leapt to him and clasped him in a full-bodied embrace.

“Over there,” she said, pointing beyond the fire pit. “Down by the swamp. There’s a culvert under the road. When they’re gone, take the truck. The gate key’s on the chain.”

“Get the fuck outa here, all of ya,” he said, and kissed her forehead.

They couldn’t knock the lock off the gate, so McInnery led them. They took the ATVs up to their right along a hill, picking their way between the trees and deadfall. Haldane almost dumped his quad into a hole camouflaged with fallen leaves and pine straw. When the quads were on the other side of the red steel gate, they gunned them forward and missed the left half-turn that would have put them on the Shamrock driveway.

As they crossed a little tie-bridge over the spring creek, McInnery hit the brakes. Movement to his left. Haldane followed suit, both dismounting at once, the ATVs still running.

“I just saw Felix, right over there,” McInnery pointed through the trees into the swamp.

“Fuckin-A.”

A flurry of nine-millimeter shots like a string of firecrackers, rounds cutting leaves and slapping tree trunks. Felix’s black coat blinked between the trees as he stumbled through the little swamp.

*

Deangela screamed, her face wet with sweat and tears.

They all stood, looking back in the direction of the camp. The burst of gunfire could only mean one thing.

“Oh ma jeez,” said Farah, crossing herself. Doc followed suit before he realized it.

The ATVs revved again, and circled back. They heard them pull into the Shamrock, still only a hundred yards back. The engines cut. Shouting voices.

“They’re that way,” one voice said.

Deangela led. Her orienteer muscle-memory kicked in. Compass in hand, secured around her neck by a lanyard, she danced over, under, around, and through vegetation and deadfall. Doc and Farah held onto on another, trying to keep up in Deangela’s wake of crushed ferns and whiplashing branches.

*

Haldane and McInnery heard Deangela’s cry of anguish.

Haldane wheezed, bent forward to catch his breath, shotgun held across his knee. McInnery held a shotgun, too. He stood erect, listening.

“Hear that?” McInnery said. “They sound like an elephant. Let’s go.”

“Just a second,” snapped Haldane. “They won’t get far. Not with two fuckin’ women and a spastic.”

*

Icy swamp water covering his legs, Felix squatted and held pressure on his ear. They’d shot him in the same fucking ear! Apparently, this was the piece God wanted back first. He pulled the tail of his coat out of the water. Extracted the pack of gummies. Ate the last three. It was all he could do to not burst into laughter. Tremors vibrated along his right side from scalp to heel inside the general shivering from the water and the snow-threatened air.

*

“Slow down.” Doc called in a loud whisper. They were falling behind.

Deangela looked back, stopped, and held up her hand. Everyone halted. She put her fingers to her lips [be quiet] and to her hear [listen].

Nothing but forest. As their breathing slowed, Deangela wept again.

A brassy chitter from the west.

“Blue jay,” said Deangela, wiping her face, alert again. Another call answered the first. “Shit,” she said. “That’s them.”

“It’s a bird,” said Doc.

“It’s a warning bird, more than one.” she said and turned to resume the trek.

Snowflakes fluttered down. Just a few.

“Great,” said Farah.

*

“Fuckin’ snow?!”

“Shit,” said McInnery as he tripped over a fallen branch under the brown ferns.

“You see their trail?” asked Haldane.

McInnery looked around.

“Damn it. Backtrack.”

They reversed along their own trail until they saw where they’d deviated. Their quarry’s path cut a line of mashed ferns through the understory, and into lower, soggy ground with shiny prints. Like someone had a line drawn for them, the trail weaving around small obstacles, but maintaining a very consistent general direction.

“Someone up there has a compass,” surmised McInnery. “Look at that.”

“All the better,” said Haldane. Let’s catch up and get the fuck out of this weather. We won’t have to deal with bodies now. What’s up that way?”

McInnery dug out the map.

“Nothing. A lake? They’re headed east, I think.” He looked up and couldn’t make out the sun’s position behind the clouds. “Little lakes and a lot of swamps. Or they could switch north,” he pointed to his left, “and make for Swamp Lakes Road. That’d give them a straight shot to State one-twenty-three. If they have a compass, they have a map. That’s two ex-Special Forces guys up there.”

“Yeah, one sickly as fuck. Get goin’ then.”

*

Deangela checked her azimuth. The declination here was seven degrees west, so she’d dialed the bezel ring, adding the seven to the magnetic to maintain a bearing of ninety degrees on the grid.

Her face and hands were scratched from breaking brush, her shins barked and sore from deadfall. Farah trailed behind her. Doc had relieved Deangela for a while on point. He trudged behind Farah now. The snowfall was more zealous now, the wind suddenly up and thrashing like whip strokes.

“I need a break,” Farah called.

They stopped. They carried their outer garments, shirts open, to reduce sweating, but the snow wet them now anyway. More than two hours, and they’d gone less than two miles. The ground beneath them was growing soft.

“We’re close to the Little Two Hearted Lakes,” Deangela announced. We can switch north to Swamp Lakes Road or take a longer route due south to pick up Duck Lake Trail.”

She was silent, then started crying again.

“We heard shots,” Doc said, “Doesn’t mean they hit him.”

It sounded weak and desperate.

*

“Can’t see this fuckin’ trail anymore,” said Haldane. Thick capes of snow whipped and swirled around them, sticking now to branches, deadfall, and the brittle skeletons of the ferns.

They stopped. McInnery looked back. Their own trail was disappearing, too.

“We have a problem,” he said, sweat running down his face. Haldane, red with effort and drenched to his collar, looked back, too.

“Jesus fuckin’ Christ.”

*

“I’m shakin’ like a dog shittin’ razor blades here,” Felix said to himself, the muddy S-10’s heater running full blast. He’d changed into dry jeans, a green flannel, and a hoodie. His pea-coat was soaked in swamp water and smeared with rank dead algae. He’d cobbled together a bandage from the first aid kit in the cabin, a whole pack of sterile 4x4 pads held over his ear by a clumsy headband of gauze. The pads were sopping red. He peered into the rearview mirror. His image looked worse than he was. Like someone with a fatal head wound.

Snowdrifts had started to form along the cabin walls and steps.

*

Deangela, Farah, and Doc trekked less than two hundred yards when they encountered a faint and overgrown east-west trail.

“Stewart Trial, I think,” Deangela guessed. “It’s not on this map, but Daddy told us about it.” She looked to Farah, who nodded. “Story is, some wolf trapper back in the day, Stewart Someone-or-another, cut the trail, then others used it to get to the north end of the lakes. Supposedly, it goes all the way to one-twenty-tree.”

*

“Is this a trail?” asked McInnery. Haldane wheezed behind him and didn’t answer. Rhetorical question anyway. It was a trail. Not much of one, but right now?

“We fuckin’ lost?” Haldane asked. Also, rhetorical.

*

Felix could wait at the camp, or he could try to get the S-10 back to the club gate and hope someone ran across him. Here, he could shelter from the freak blizzard, but there was little likelihood that anyone would come out to look for him afterward if he became more infirm. At the gate, on the other hand, he might run out of gas using the heater. At least the little cab would hold some body heat.

He went back into the cabin and picked up blankets, canned food with an opener, a spoon, and a jug of water. Maybe a hunter would find him at the gate.

*

“Time is it?” asked Doc.

Deangela consulted her watch.

“Almost three. We need to eat and drink.”

She opened the flyaway ruck. Took out six protein bars and the floppy two-quart canteen.

“Headache,” said Farah.

“We’re dehydrated,” said Doc.

“And we’re coffee drinkers,” added Deangela. “We’re withdrawing.” She found the little bottle of generic acetaminophen in the rucksack and gave out two apiece.

“How far to the road?” asked Doc.

“Crow flies,” Deangela answered, “six miles. Trail distance, double it.”

“Damn,” said Doc.

“What?” said Farah.

“We’ll be out overnight.”

Farah looked at Deangela, who just nodded.

Visibility was approaching zero.

*

“Which way we goin’?” Haldane was agitated, exhausted. “I’m fuckin’ starved.”

“Are these tracks?” McInnery studied the snow in front of him.

“Where?”

“Look,” McInnery said as he walked forward. “It’s them. So, this is east, I think.” He looked upward again, but the storm still concealed any nuance of skylight. “We catch them, finish this, and head back to the four-wheelers.”

“Can we get out with ’em?”

“Unlikely now,” guessed McInnery, “but we can ride out the storm in their cabin. They’ll have food and water there.”

Haldane looked waxy. Like his battery was low.

“Yeah,” he said. “Okay.”

*

The S-10 swam through fresh drifts atop fresh mud. Felix whipped the wheel one way then the other, into the skids, every moment of progress as precarious as the last, nerves and muscles stretched against the route and his body’s own tremulous rebellions. His face jumped and twitched like he was wired to electrodes, knuckles white on the wheel, eyes locked through the whirl of white opacity on the ghost of a road.

A smaller road appeared on the right. Fresh tracks, two ski-lines on either side of a belt. Snowmobile. The pickup skidded as he hit the brakes, coming to a stop crosswise to the road.

He stick-shifted into reverse, but the tires had a mind of their own and fishtailed uncontrollably. Then they span, immobile, as the little truck sank. He was stuck.

73

Deangela yanked the straps shut on the rucksack. Doc and Farah brushed snow off one another. Doc was only bent for a moment to get the backs of her legs when the first shotgun blast tore through them.

“Drop,” shouted Doc. They fell to their bellies. Doc counted the rounds as the next five shots exploded, buckshot ripping sticks and clipping leaves. They could hear the men reloading.

“Run,” Doc shouted. Deangela had the pack in one hand. They followed Doc as he charged to the right, breaking brush away from the trail. The pumps racked on the 870s and a second fusillade tore behind them, this time by mere feet.

“I can’t see shit,” shouted Haldane. The wind was howling. They slid three more shells apiece into the loading ports and racked again.

Doc spotted a gully. He held his finger to his lips [be quiet] and pointed down. They followed him into the furrow, bending low as they chased the bends and twists. Another six rounds went off, further away now, buckshot hissing and slapping overhead.

“I have blood here!” McInnery’s voice. “We hit one.”

Deangela looked from Farah to Doc. Scarlet drops had formed on the back of Doc’s coat. She opened one strap on the pack as she ran and rooted inside. Doc was listing to his right, a hitch in his step. She caught up.

“You’re shot,” she whispered.

They kept moving.

“My back,” he said. “Keep going.”

“You’re losing blood,” she protested.

“We’ll lose a lot more if we don’t move.”

They made another five minutes or so before Doc stumbled and stopped.

Deangela found the first aid kit. She tore it open and pulled out a roll of gauze. Farah took it from her and lifted up Doc’s hoodie, shirt, and long-john top. The wound track was across his left lower back. A deep slash at least eight inches long, with a lump at one end where the buckshot had burrowed. She pushed the whole gauze-roll onto the wound, and he grunted.

“Hold this,” she ordered Deangela in a whisper, while she whipped off her own belt. Farah lowered Doc’s clothing, Deangela’s hand still holding the gauze roll, and secured the belt around him. It held the gauze, applied pressure, and stopped the flow. Farah squeeze-wiped the tail of his clothing free of drips, and washed her hand with wet snow, drying it on her jeans.

“Let’s go,” she said. Doc’s face was wet with sweat, but he nodded his agreement.

*

Haldane and McInnery stayed on the blood trail, snow covering it fast.

*

Deangela’s sense was that they’d turned north. That was confirmed when the gulch met the trail again.

“The trail,” whispered Doc.

“You okay?” Deangela whispered, cupping his face in her hands.

“Have to be,” he said. “Don’t stop.”

“Trail?” asked Farah.

“Keep to the gully,” ordered Deangela. “I have an idea.”

No one else did, so they fell in behind her.

*

McInnery led Haldane. They stopped on the cusp of the gully.

*

Wrapped in an orange wool blanket, Felix stumbled through snowdrifts behind the rapidly disappearing snowmobile tracks. He came to a small wooden bridge, on either side of which through the snow flowed a tannin-red stream under a tufted arch of alders. Trundling away from him along the edge of the stream was a black bear. He stopped and watched it move away through the storm with the resignation of an old man. He heard a buzz. The snowmobile. Maybe half a mile. He tripped and fell. Stood again. Shook out the blanket and stumbled forward.

*

Deangela led her team past a fallen black spruce, roots clawing up through sheets of snow. She stopped and looked back.

“Doc, over there.” She pointed to the tree. “Hide behind those roots. I’ll be back in a little bit. Promise.”

“You sure?”

“Positive. Mama, you, too. Please. Gonna lead ’em off. Back in five. Step in Doc’s tracks as you go over.”

Deangela started stomping tracks in a broad track forward. Twenty yards up, she dug out a protein bar wrapper and dropped it in the trail. Another two hundred feet, and she dropped another. Then forward again, just one line of tracks.

When she returned, walking backward, Farah and Doc’s side-track had nearly disappeared. She took off the rucksack and used the bottom to smooth behind herself into the hiding place. They laid in the snow in a tight pile. She pulled Farah’s red stocking cap off and handed it to her. Farah stuffed it into her pocket and lifted her hood. Deangela pulled great armfuls of wet snow over the top of them that fell icily into their collars and numbed her fingers.

They heard Haldane curse. No one moved.

The men breathed hard as they picked their way past. Deangela saw their backs through the roots and prayed.

“You saw the blood,” said McInnery. “Someone’s hit.”

“Not enough,” whined Haldane. His gait was unsteady, their progress slow.

“Look,” said McInnery, picking up the food wrapper.

“Fuck,” said Haldane. “They coulda left the food in it.”

An interminable ten minutes passed before Deangela, Farah, and Doc rose and shook off the snow. Doc trembled.

Deangela held him by his right arm as they headed back, snow stinging their eyes and hindering their steps. The scratches on her face were weeping red. Farah called in a stage whisper. “He’s bleeding again.” The tails of his upper garments were crimson wet.

“A little further,” he protested. “Just a little.”

Deangela looked him straight in the face.

“I’m not losing you,” she said. “You hear me?”

“Let’s go,” he said. “It’s a little blood. No organs, no bones, okay. Let’s go.”

The women took him by both arms.

*

Off to the north, Haldane groaned, “How they keepin’ this pace with that debilitated motherfucker? I actually thought I hit ’im.”

*

The snowmobile went silent again. Felix staggered. A forceful spasm in his right leg provoked a yelp of pain, and he dropped over into the snow.

“Shoulda stayed with the truck,” he said aloud to no one. He pulled the blanket tight around himself. “Just sit here a second. Catch my breath.”

74

Bill Sneary, a sixty-year-old fireplug of a man with owlish glasses and a thick short beard, was the club caretaker. His cabin was a big boxy structure with gray metal siding on Dove Trail just west of where the East Branch Trail crossed the wooden bridge. He and his half-brother, Dennis Nelson, had known the snowstorm was coming and opted to ride it out. They had Dennis’s yellow Mercedez G-500 with a wench. It could dig and pull its way across pretty much any terrain, and Bill could follow with his red Wrangler. Bill kept a Polaris snowmobile in the shed. He’d taken it to the gate this morning to check the sign-in register and ensure no one was stranded.

When he returned, he kicked the wet snow off his boots against the threshold, slinging his coat on the hanger by the door. Dennis—a younger man by a decade with long gray-blonde curly hair, bloodshot brown eyes, and a Fu Manchu mustache—had his coat, gloves, stocking cap, and goggles on the kitchen table, ready for the switch.

“Anyone?” Dennis asked.

“Marty and Gert Palmer. They’re down Detour Trail. Old hands, but we oughta check just in case. Visibility’s terrible, so careful of the shoulders. Back toward the gate. On the right, just before the first bridge. You get to the bridge, you gone too far. Put a little gas in her, okay.”

Dennis went out, topped up the Polaris and cranked it. Icy wind slapped him in the face. He pulled his scarf up around his neck and lowered his goggles, but they spotted up as quickly as he wiped them. The belt caught and launched him down the drive.

“Shit” he blurted at the bridge. He’d passed his turn. Just as he planted a boot in the snow and tilted the sled to turn it, he saw a blaze of orange under a drift. He left the sled running and dismounted. He pulled the finger-cap off one of his mittens and touched the orange. It was covered in a sheen of ice. A blanket. He brushed away snow.

“Oh, my Lord!” he cried out.

*

The voices of coyotes echoed through the trees like church bells announcing the coming of night. The snow was relentless, temperature dropping like a shot bird.

Deangela looked at her watch: 5:55.

“We need to make camp,” she said.

They’d dressed Doc’s wound with a pressure bandage made from pieces of the same dirty gauze slathered in antibiotic ointment, and secured it with a circumferential wrap around his waist and almost a whole roll of tape that was reluctant to stick to his sweaty skin. Deangela gave him another two acetaminophen and nagged him into drinking most of the remaining water. “I can make water,” she said, eyes sweeping across the carpet of snow. “I don’t need to tell you you’re hypovolemic.” He’d smiled weakly.

That was more than two hours ago.

“Mama,” she said now, “can you clean off some ground for us? Like ten feet?”

Farah started scooping with her boots. In the rush, none had grabbed gloves.

Deangela headed off into the woods with the mini-hatchet.

Doc sat on a poncho, shivering inside a poncho liner and a space blanket.

*

McInnery was weak with hunger now, too. All that gym muscle wanted calories. The gully led them north before it petered out, but they crossed another trail—a small human trail or a big game trail—and decided to follow it until Haldane had said he couldn’t take another step. He was the color of boiled chicken. They slowed and finally stopped, their sweaty clothes beginning to freeze.

“Harry,” said McInnery finally, “We may be in trouble here.”

“Ah, God.”

“It’s getting late. We don’t have food or water, and we don’t know where we are.” Haldane looked around and shuddered. Everything looked the same. “We need to make some kind of shelter, ride out the storm, and try again in daylight.”

“Shelter?”

“Some way to conserve body heat. Sticks, leaves, doesn’t matter. And out of the wind.”

*

Doc trembled. Farah held him close under the space blanket. The tail-end of evening twilight drew down into darkness. Working with a headlamp, Deangela made a lean-to from one of the ponchos to shield them from the blizzard. She squatted now, making an inverted V of twigs around a tent of lighter-knot splinters, She shaved fuzz from her jeans with the Leatherman and impregnated it with lip balm—a paraffin wick. A pile of wood alongside, salvaged from under fallen trees. Once ready, she reached down into her crotch, where she’d stowed the lighter to warm it. Hovering low over the pine-pitch to shield it, she clicked the lighter. The paraffin fuzz caught and snickered, wavering precariously. When the lighter knot crackled to life, she slowly pulled the V of tinder closed over the top of the flame.

Thank you, Theodora.

Thirty minutes later, they huddled together under the space blanket, facing the flames of a small, but quite hot fire, Doc in the middle, face strained and pale, holding his pain.

“Ya ready?” Farah asked him.

He just nodded weakly.

“Turn over then.”

Deangela bit off a two-foot length of four-pound monofilament from her vest, threaded it through a fish hook, and snell-tied the end. Using the Leatherman, she opened the gap on the trout hook until it was a broad curve instead of a J. She handed it to Farah and switched on the headlamp. Doc’s wound was bleeding again, the lateral laceration having stretched apart with every bend. It had to be closed.

He groaned when Farah pushed the hook in and yelped like a pup when she pulled the eye through. Deangela kneeled across his head Farah and dabbed antibacterial ointment on hook and line after each loop of a continuous suture. Doc gripped her by the ankle and squeezed with each pass of the hook.

“Gonna leave a thick scar. Sorry, love.”

“Enlisted man’s sutures,” Doc said, trying to laugh. “You think the fire’ll lead ’em here?”

“They came after us with guns,” answered Deangela, “prepared to kill us at camp. No food, no water. They’ve gone back.” She thought of Felix. Tears fell onto Doc’s back as he groaned through the next turn of the hook.

*

The snow was relentless. Haldane, laying down now, muttered incoherently. McInnery quaked, his teeth battering. They’d found a sandy draw alongside a creek bed, the brown waterline shining and trickling through columns of lethal white. McInnery tried to get Haldane to drink from it, but Haldane was succumbing to delirium. McInnery drank some directly from the stream in spite of having no thirst. He dragged more brush in over Haldane, then added great scoops of wet leaves. When Haldane was no longer visible under the leaves, McInnery wormed his way under the makeshift blanket. He rolled Haldane on his side and spooned himself onto Haldane’s back, squeezing himself in close to find what body heat he could and wishing he knew how to pray.

*

They melted snow in the pot for water.

“Not enough, but better than none,” Deangela said.

“I want a tattoo that says that,” replied Doc, still casting drollery into the face of dire circumstance. The soldier’s way. Deangela and Farah rewarded him with a glimmer of laughter. Deangela abruptly kissed his hand.

The fire was allowed to die. They lowered the lean-to onto two logs, making a tight burrow. Doc was squeezed between Farah and Deangela, the three of them sandwiched by one poncho, liner, and space blanket on the frigid ground and a poncho, liner, and space blanket on top. Doc had one arm under Deangela’s head and another around her chest, where they interlaced their fingers. No one complained about the sour breath of three dehydrated people. This, too, was warmth.

Not enough, but better than none.

75

Northern Michigan
October 23, 2021

It hadn’t been the Halloween blizzard of 1991, a deadly October storm that went into the record books, but this freak polar vortex dumped five inches before it was pushed back into Canada by a warmer front from the southwest. By daybreak the wind gusts had died down to puffs and gushes, the snow converted from fluff to slop.

Deangela, their leader, was first up, twisting and stretching the kinks out of her body, hood back. The trees dropped great unwelcome splash of icy water down her neck. She took mouthfuls of snow and spat to rid herself of a foul night-tongue. She picked her teeth as clean as possible with a sliver of lighter knot that smelled like turpentine. She walked around a tree to void, her urine dark and thick, the chill around her bottom waking her enough to make her wish she had coffee.

Farah rose, having watched her daughter, and followed a similar routine while Deangela shaved off lengths of the pitch-pine with the mini-hatchet and worked on a very small fire, the cooking pot sticky now with burnt resin.

Doc sat up. Deangela finished melting a pot of water. She rubbed wet snow along the edge to cool it and handed it to him.

“Drink.”

“Thanks.”

He spat the first mouthful on the ground, chugged the rest, and handed it back. The pot hissed when she set it back on the crackling little flame. She pushed more twigs in to the fire and scooped more snow. The women drank a pot each and forced Doc to drink a second.

Doc sat wrapped in space blankets while they broke camp. When they were ready to move, Deangela packed. Consulted her watch: 7:23. The cloud cover was thin. The southeastern sky glowed silver.

“Five, six miles to the county road,” she estimated. Looking to Doc, “Not easy miles. Can you do it?”

“We got a choice?”

She looked at her phone. Still no coverage. Shut it back off.

“Nope.”

They picked up a soggy eastern game trail within half an hour. Their feet—soaked, macerated, and numb—made noises in their boots. Still easier than weaving though the overland pick-up-stix of fallen trees, where they’d averaged a quarter mile an hour and risk further injury to Doc.

Doc was sweaty and haggard, taking on a thousand-yard stare. Deangela dosed herself and Farah with another thousand milligrams of acetaminophen. Doc got fifteen hundred.

They’d made more than half the distance when Farah slipped on a submerged log and fell sideways onto the marshy ground. She yelped when she hit.

“Mama!”

Doc fell, too, when he lunged to help.

“My ankle,” cried Farah.

“Shit, shit, shit!” Deangela took Farah by the right arm and helped her up. Farah almost collapsed again when she put weight on her left leg. Doc was on all fours, trying to stand.

Deangela sat her mother on a fallen spruce bough and turned to Doc. He looked like warmed over death, gray and hollow.

Farah tried to stand again and fell back on the bough.

“Hurt like a bastard,” she said. “He okay?”

“I’m okay,” Doc lied.

“You’re not,” contradicted Deangela, lifting him to his feet. She turned to Farah. “Lemme see that ankle.”

“Let me see it,” said Doc.

They bent over Farah. She pulled wet cuff of her jeans above the soaked hiking shoe and sopping white sock. The ankle was swelling.

“Broken?” asked Deangela.

“Sprained,” said Doc and Farah at once.

“That can be just as bad,” added Doc. “Need to wrap it. Quick as we can.”

Deangela shed the rucksack. She yanked out one of the poncho liners, unholstered her Leatherman, opened the knife, and cut a short line through the fabric. She ripped the fabric in a long strip. When the tear reached the seam, she cut it again. Handed the strip to Doc. His hands shook as he removed Farah’s boot. He was breathing like he’d just run a 440 but managed to roll Farah’s ankle in a pretty good semblance of a ninety-degree bandage.

“She needs to elevate it, but we gotta go,” he said, huffing and wheezing as he tugged Farah’s gapped-open hiker back onto her foot.

“No,” said Deangela. “We don’t. I do.”

They looked up at her.

She yanked the space blankets out and handed them to Farah.

“Wrap up together. I can make the road alone in half an hour.”

“No,” they both said.

“Yes. Mama,” said the ex-orienteer. “I’ll mark as I go, get help, and come back.”

They wanted to object, but she was right and they both knew it. Doc tilted left, and they both grabbed for him. Deangela got him onto the bough and laid him over across Farah’s lap. She gave Farah another 500 milligrams of acetaminophen, and 500 of aspirin for the swelling. Farah swallowed them all without water. Deangela put the ruck on a poncho and propped up Farah’s foot.

“I’m going,” she said. “Love you.” No specification as to whom.

She turned and took off at a clip, breaking branches as she cantered.

*

Her hiking boots felt like gelatin. The flesh on her feet was spongy and raw; but soon enough, her muscles warmed. Her breathing became deep and steady like a distance runner. Her muscles shifted to reserve fuel.

She was about to break overland, the trail having bent north, when she heard the vehicle in the distance.

“Praise the Lord,” she said, and ran, ignoring the lances of pain in her feet. She heard the vehicle pass into the distance. “Damn it!”

When she hit what she knew was County 500, she took her burner out and switched it on. Eighteen percent battery, but it had bars. She looked back at where she’d come out of the treeline, ran back, and dragged a long, wet limb from the woods to the edge of the road. She scooped gravel into piles on the edge of the road, three on either side of the limb.

Another vehicle, heading north. Truck. Black. Ram Laramie with a shell.

She waved at it, signaling for it to stop. It slowed, a vague face peering from behind tinted glass, then sped on.

“Bastard!”

She realized she must look a fright to people hereabouts. Wet, dirty, scratched, blood-stained, black woman on the side of the road in the middle of white-nowhere.

She dialed 911.

“Nine-one-one, what’s your emergency?”

“Two injured people. We were trapped in the storm overnight.”

“Where are you, ma’am?”

“Luce County five-hundred, maybe two miles north of one-twenty-three.”

“There are two of you?”

“Three, two are injured and back down the trail. Sprained ankle and a gunshot wound.”

“Gunshot wound? Is anyone armed?”

“No, not since yesterday morning. We escaped overland.”

“I’m sending the Sheriff and an ambulance, ma’am.”

“The other two, the injured ones, they’re almost three miles back in the woods.”

“Understood, can you tell me the nature of the gunshot wound?”

“Buckshot. Deep laceration across his back. He’s lost blood. He’s borderline hypothermic.”

“Your name, please, ma’am.”

“Deangela Dale. The other two are Farah Dale and Hector Fermin, F-E-R-M-I-N.”

“Which of you was shot, ma’am?”

“Doc, Hector. The guy.”

“Two women and a man.”

“Yes, and they’ll need to carry him out almost three miles.”

“Are you visible from the road?”

“Yes . . . wait a minute.” A vehicle, heading south.

“Ma’am.”

“Just a minute,” she said. “There’s a vehicle here, please, please stay on.”

Red and white antique pickup. ’76 GMC short cab with almost as much rust as paint. She waved her arms. It slowed, then stopped.

“Someone’s here,” she told the 911 operator.

“Can you stay on the line?”

“I need to talk to this person,” she said. “Just send the ambulance and a crew to get out two injured that are three miles off the road.”

The driver stepped out.

“Jesus,” she whispered. It was Red Beard, the intimidating dude from the river three years back. Tall, thick, hands like shovels, chestnut insulated bib overalls, olive GI sweater, red Timber Charlie’s baseball cap. Up close, he had vulnerable eyes with skin tags on both sides. The beard wildly unkempt, Karl Marx in ginger.

“You okay?” He didn’t seem to want to intimidate her now.

“Umm . . .”

“I said, you okay?”

“No,” she said, wary.

“What happened? You look terrible.”

“My m-mom and my friend,” she almost cried.

“I know you?” he asked.

“We met on the river once. Few years ago.”

He broke into a smile. “Trout woman! Yah, what happened here, eh?” The smile gave way again to concern.

“My mom and my friend. They’re in trouble,” she said. “Police and ambulance are on the way.” She wanted him to know cops were coming.

“Where are they then?”

She pointed back at the woods. “Maybe three miles. My mom sprained her ankle. My friend was shot.”

“Shot! You want help? I got a rifle in the truck.” No intimidation. He seemed absolutely sincere.

“The guys with the guns, they’re not . . . no, no guns.”

“When? Where?”

“Yesterday, long way from here. He needs to get to a hospital,” she fought tears. “Really soon.”

Red Beard approached like he was about to take her into an embrace. She flinched, and he stood back, holding up his hands.

“Look, we weren’t introduced. You caught me on a bad day back then, eh. I’m Len,” he said, offering his hand. She took it warily.

“Deangela. How long will it take for the Sheriff and ambulance, you think?”

“Ambulance, forty minutes maybe. Sheriff, depends on where he is. Lotsa people lost power last night.”

“I need to get them out,” she pleaded.

He thought about it.

“Two people,” he said.

She nodded.

“Can your mom walk? With assistance?”

“Slowly, yeah, probably.”

“This other fella, how bad?”

“The shot didn’t hit any organs, but he lost a lot of blood, and we’ve been out in the woods all day yesterday and all night.”

He whistled. “Lucky you guys are alive,” he said. “Okay, Deangela, let’s try this. Tell the 911 person about my truck. I got orange cones in the back. I’ll put ’em out for the Sheriff. Then you and me, we’ll go get ’em. Rescue people show up, they’ll see our trail?”

“I blazed the whole route with broken branches. And it’s wet, so yeah.”

“Sure we don’t need the gun?”

“We need all four hands,” she said.

“Fair enough.”

“You got any food?” she asked.

“A bag of venison jerky. You need some?”

“My friend will, if he’s still conscious. And yes, I’m hungry.”

“I got water, too, maybe half a gallon, and like five Red Bulls.”

“Yes. Can I have one now?”

He opened the hatch on the shell.

“Here’s a bag of dried apples, too. When’d you eat last?”

“Yesterday,” she said.

“Eat these while we go,” he said, handing her a piece of jerky and the bag of desiccated apples. “Tell the emergency operator.”

“Operator?”

“I’m still here. I heard what he said.”

“Look, there’s another man, in trouble, not here.”

“Not sure what you mean, you say another fella?”

“Check the Shamrock Camp on Widgeon Trail inside the Luce Sportsman’s club.”

“I’ll pass that on, ma’am, but you need to stay there and wait.”

“Sorry, I have to go.”

PART EIGHT

But he that sows lies in the end shall not lack of a harvest, and soon he may rest from toil indeed, while others reap and sow in his stead.

—J.R.R. Tolkien

76

Heading down Deangela’s trail, Len (Leonard McKenny) used a can of marking paint he’d rummaged from the bed of his truck to spray orange dots along the trail for the rescuers. Deangela led the way back on an energy surge from the meat, the Red Bull, and the dehydrated apples, and stuffed the fat bag of deer jerky into the back pocket of her vest for Farah and Doc. Len carried the three remaining Red Bulls, still in the plastic rings, and a half-full gallon jug of water.

Len, a large man with a plenty of natural insulation, breathed like a bellows in her wake. He didn’t complain about his boots sinking into the wet holes or his pant cuffs dripping with snow slop.

“I owe you,” she called back.

“No, you don’t,” he wheezed. “This is me makin’ up for my bad behavior.”

“What?” she said breathily as she high-stepped a log and weaved through the fallen branches.

“Hunters killed my dog,” he said between drawing draughts of air. “A few days before.” Big breath. “Cookie. Black Newfoundland.” Three breaths. “They thought she was a bear.” Two more breaths. “I shouldna took it out on you.”

She stopped and turned.

“It scared me,” she answered, stopping to turn. “I was alone out there.” He nodded in repentance. “I’m really sorry about your dog.”

She ducked right under an alder branch and took off again through across higher ground.

*

Farah shivered, hood pulled tight around her face, fingers aching with the cold. The sky was breaking open into blue patches. A wet breeze stirred. She’d unwrapped herself and made a poncho/liner bed on the wet ground. Doc was on his back with both space blankets, the other poncho, and a liner over him. Her ankle fired bolts of pain.

Doc’s color was ghastly. Blood return in his nails was too slow, his pulse too rapid, weak, and thready. He moaned when she rolled him onto the wound. She’d pushed the pack with forest debris under his feet to shunt blood to his core and brain.

“Hold on, sweet boy.”

“Tour in Iraq, tour in Afghanistan,” he said weakly. “Shot in Michigan.” Anemic smile.

“Funny man.” She turned her face.

He drifted.

She prayed.

He whispered, “Deangela.”

“She comin’.”

*

They both breathed hard. And sweat.

“Almost there,” she told Len, then called, “Mama!”

“Here, Pick!”

Farah, no more than a hundred yards. Deangela poured on speed, pulling away from Len.

“How is he?” She dropped down to her knees next to where Farah leaned over Doc.

“Weak,” Farah replied, startled when Len came crashing in from the trail.

“This is Len, Mama. He’s gonna help.”

“Just him? Sorry. No offense.”

“None taken,” Len huffed and wiped his face.

Doc was unconscious now, breathing fast and shallow. His color horrified Deangela.

“Ambulance is coming,” she told Farah. “But they were forty-five minutes behind us. Power’s out all over. And they gotta get down this trail.”

“We can’t wait,” Farah said.

“How do we move ’im?” asked Deangela.

“Wish I’da thought to bring my axe,” said Len. “We could make a travois.”

Deangela’s face lit. She opened the rucksack and held up the mini-hatchet.

“We need something to lash it,” said Len.

She pulled up a wad of paracord.

“Fuckin-A,” he blurted. “Sorry.”

“Fuckin-A is right,” Deangela said, handing him the hatchet. “You cut. I’ll lash.”

“You know how?” he asked.

“Yes,” Deangela and Farah said at once.

*

Gunshot took priority, even with all the power outages. Deputy Brianna Baker took the call. She caught up with the ambulance on M-123 and pulled around them to take the lead. The highway was wet, ice patches gone, but once on County 500, they encountered sloppy gray drifts. The road was at least two months past seeing the last grader, so the cruiser and the ambulance had to dodge lake size puddles, rocks, and potholes. Some of the road was corduroyed, rattling the shocks.

She pulled up in front of the truck and stepped out. Half Sault tribe, she was dark haired and round-faced, her hair on duty pulled into a low, tight bun. Stocky with straight, firm limbs and strong hands.

The ambulance stopped in the middle of the road. The driver’s window went down.

“What about it, Bree?” Phil Donald. Lanky old head. Pushing forty. EMT-P since he was twenty-five years old. Knew his shit.

“Gimme sec,” she said, and walked the edge of the road until she conned the orange marking paint and the trail break on the tree line. “Yah, pull over there, would ya.” she called out to him, indicating behind the truck.

Phil brought Ward Bailey with him, anticipating a strenuous and possibly hazardous call. New guy, but in sound physical shape with a good head on his shoulders. They left the motor running and stepped out.

“How far back, ya think?” he asked the Deputy.

“Three miles, they say.”

He hooted.

“I hear there’s two gone back already?” Phil asked.

“So they say,” she answered.

“Best get goin’ then. Ward, get us two collapsible litters and a rescue pack. Ankle brace, too, eh.” To Deputy Baker, “You comin’, Bree? Brian’ll stay with the ambulance.”

“Lemme get my high boots outa the trunk. Wet as all get out in there.”

*

Len dragged the A-frame travois, ponchos doubled to support Doc’s weight. He was wrapped like a burrito in space blankets and liners. Deangela lifted the back of the travois to jump deadfall, and acted as a crutch for Farah, who limp-hopped on the swollen ankle, reanimated now with deer jerky and caffeine. Deangela had knocked back another Red Bull, and she had a bellyful of dried apples. She knew she’d be farting like a show pony in a couple hours. Doc’s pulse last check: a hundred-twenty and frail. Hovering just below conscious, he groaned over each bump.

They stopped to shift him up again, when they heard the voices.

“Hallo!”

Len, looking hard put, if still determined, tried to holler back, but he failed to catch enough breath. It came out like a motor refusing to start.

“Over here!” shouted Farah with surprising strength.

They laid down the travois. Deangela leapt forward to meet the rescuers.

77

Deputy Baker sat in the cruiser with Farah as they loaded the ambulance. She keyed the mike on her radio.

“Boss, it’s Bree, over.”

With Farah coaching, the Deputy called in the other possible victim, Felix Sharpe.

“We have ’im,” the Sheriff said. “Club manager found ’im yesterday.”

“Alive?”

“Barely,” he said. Farah gasped. “He was shot in his ear, and near froze to death.”

“We’re headed in,” she said. “Figure it out when we get there, eh.”

“You got it, Bree.”

Brian took the ambulance wheel. Phil and Ward removed Doc’s coat. Ward cut the rest of his clothes off with trauma shears. Doc was under clean blankets now, and the vehicle was warm. Deangela rode along, stroking his forehead.

The deputy’s car led the ambulance with Farah in the passenger seat. Len followed in his truck. The three vehicles sliced south on the one-two-three; the forest spread wide on either side.

At Phil Donald’s urging, the ambulance carried two refrigerated units of whole O-negative blood on the truck. They put that in Doc’s right arm with a big 14-guage catheter and saline with the same in the left, both running full bore. Joy Hospital was on the line. The ER duty physician was Aanya Chawla, an orthopedic specialist.

“High or low velocity?” she asked.

“Low, shotgun,” Phil answered.

“Bones? Organs?”

“Lateral laceration. Left posterior serratus, tenth intercostal space. Maybe a rib. No organs. One piece of shot still in there. They sutured it with fishin’ line, eh. Pretty decent suture.” he remarked. “One of the victims is a nurse practitioner.”

“What kind of needle?” Surprised and curious.

“Fish hook, apparently.”

“Wow. Give him a gram of Kefzol,” she directed. “Neuro status?”

“Three, two, four,” he reported. Glasgow scale.

“Hypovolemic. Give him both units and pour on the saline.”

“Already runnin’.”

Doc roused as they crossed the town limit three minutes from Joy Hospital. His eyes flippered open. “Jesus, I’m starvin’,” he muttered.

Deangela erupted in tears.

*

Six people sat in the ER lobby, gawking. Ward and Phil pushed the ambulance cot through, tailed by a parade: Len and Deangela, Farah behind on a crutch the crew had given her, Deputy Baker supporting her. All of them filthy and wet, bloodstained, looking like they’d returned from battle.

*

Felix was in a coma. Frostbite on both hands. IVs, catheter, ECG leads, O₂ on nasal canula, all the mechanical roots attaching him to the hospital grid. Farah sat with him, pressing through the beads on her rosary.

Deangela and Len were with Doc. He was recovering well. Doc’s fishing-line sutures had been replaced with much admiring commentary by the ER staff, and one double-aught shot removed. On his overbed table lay the debris from a Zellar’s “wet burrito” and what was once a double slice of blueberry pie, courtesy of Len, who’d stayed and made a food run.

“He’s gonna pull through,” said Doc. “Felix is a tough bastard.” He squeezed Deangela’s hand. She smiled, nodded, and sniffled.

Deputy Baker came in, cleaned up and in a fresh uniform.

“How’s this guy?” she asked.

“Well,” Doc answered, “thank you. You one of ’em came for me?”

“All in a deputy’s day,” she smiled.

“I’m very grateful.”

“That’s good. Maybe you can help me with this report then, eh?”

“You find those guys?” Doc asked. Deangela eyes dittoed the question.

“We found two all-terrain vehicles at that property,” she said. There were rifles on ’em, but no men. Your friend was shot, too, eh. In the ear, they say. He’s sick, I understand?”

“ALS,” said Deangela. “Lou Gehrig’s disease.”

“Bad?”

“Months,” Deangela replied, a tear plunging down her cheek. “They’ve given him months.”

“Sorry to hear it. So, explain to me again why these fellas were after ya.” Skeptical shift in her voice. “Ya say they’re from the government?”

“Find their leasing papers,” Deangela said. “Run their names and prints. Their paychecks are from the Department of Defense.”

“And none of ya got warrants out on for ya for anything?”

“You ran our names,” Deangela insisted. “Check North Carolina, you’ll find my investigator’s license.”

“This is Michigan,” Deputy Baker said. “You’re not licensed here.”

“True, but in this case, we’re working with a journalist . . . were . . . she was killed. By them. We think.” Baker’s eyebrows rose again. “So, we’re doing investigative journalism, not private investigation.” Doc and Farah looked at her.

“About these government fellas?”

“DOD. And in the process of our inquiries, we stumbled upon a criminal enterprise involving a Michigan law enforcement officer.”

“This Correa fella.”

“Correct.”

“It may surprise ya, then,” the deputy said, “that he’s missin’, too, eh.”

“Shit,” said Doc. “Since when?”

“Since the nineteenth. Ya say these fellas might be after ’im, same as you folks?”

“Yes,” Doc and Deangela said at once.

“He and I,” Doc said, “were in the Army together.” Baker looked down and nodded several times.

To Deangela: “You had a weapon in your pack.” Looking up.

“A pellet pistol,” she said. “Not much of a weapon. It’s an emergency kit. The pellet gun’s for food.”

“Food?”

“Rabbits, birds, squirrels?”

“I see. You were ready to fish, too. Quite the outdoorsman, eh?”

“I took the fishing vest because it had other stuff in it. Snap decision. But, yes, that property’s our fishing camp.”

“Season’s past.”

“It is, but we didn’t come to fish. We came to hide.”

“From the government fellas.”

“Correct.”

To Doc: “Ya know they cut your clothes off, yah?” Doc nodded. “We found a flash drive in your pocket.” Doc sat up, wincing. Deangela’s face froze. “What’s on that, eh?”

“You have it,” Doc said, “you’d know, right?”

“Haven’t looked at it. That’d take a warrant. We got your permission?”

“Doesn’t pertain to the attack on us,” intervened Deangela. The deputy looked at her.

“So, ya know what’s on it, eh?”

“Point of law’s all.” She sounded more defensive than she wanted to.

“I need it back,” said Doc. “It’s personal. Sorry.”

“Yah, okay. We’ll be keepin’ your clothes, though, okay? They’re no good to ya now, cut up like that ’n all, but we’re still investigatin’ this alleged attack. That blood’s all yours, ya think?”

“A-negative. To the last drop.”

*

“Cedar, it’s me.”

“Holy shit, woman,” Cedar answered. “I was about to file filing missing persons reports. You okay?”

“More or less. Long story. How’s my dog?”

“Isis is fine, Dedes. What the hell’s gone on?”

“I got tales for days when I get back. Right now, I need a favor.”

“Go ahead.”

“I need contact information for a good reporter, not there in Durham. New York, DC, LA, Chicago maybe. Someone who’d go for some whistleblower material. Find it on the DL. Don’t contact them.”

*

“Ginni Langhorst?”

“Yes, who’s this?”

“Deangela Dale, remember me?”

“How could I forget?”

“Ginni, how’d you like a refund on your fee?”

“For doing what?”

“Send some files for me. Anonymously.”

*

“How is he?” Deangela asked, startling Farah at Felix’s bedside.

“Same.”

Deangela handed her a cup of machine coffee.

“No, thanks,” Farah said. “Almost eight o’clock.” Darkness outside the window. “We need sleep.”

Deangela sat the cup on Felix’s table.

“Len’s offered us his place. He’s got a little house north of town.”

“Not t’impose.”

“Told him that. Sweet of him to offer. We owe that guy.”

“I know. Any ideas ’bout that?”

“I do, yeah.” She gazed into a distant nothing then came back. “I’ll call for a room over at Quality.”

“Been a memorable day.”

Deangela snorted.

78

October 24, 2021

The clerk at Quality Inn had looked for a moment last night as if she’d refuse them a room. Scratched up black women, bruised, filthy, blood-stained, Farah limping. Big Red Len, equally stained and tattered, standing behind them.

Len came back for them at just past nine. Deangela offered him money, but he refused. She cajoled him into at least letting her fill his truck with gas before he drove them out to the Shamrock again to collect their things and Farah’s truck. The keys had been in Felix’s pocket.

Someone from the club had repositioned the muddy S-10 along the edge of Widgeon Trail. By the time they got back to Newberry, a place called UP Trading Company & The Exclusive Moose was open. Two stores in one. The Moose half was furniture and outdoorsy home décor. The Trading Company half featured whole lines of pricy artisanal outdoor clothing with stitched maps of the Upper Peninsula instead of a polo player. They bought four black ball caps with the UP logo and an extra-large Up North hoodie, red. Stopped by Duke’s Sports next, where Deangela bought an Orvis Clearwater fly rod and reel combo.

They wore the matching ball caps like goofy tourists, Deangela’s brim crimped like an old baseball player (as she did with al lner ball caps). Stopped by Len’s town place, a rough lumber cabin at the end of a wooded driveway. He wasn’t home yet. They placed the hoodie and the fly rod combo next to his front door under the porch. It was past noon, so they added a day to the room, showered, dressed, picked up a Pizza Hut large supreme, and headed to the hospital.

Doc was awake and alert in spite of the codeine. Grinned at his new cap. Grateful for the bag of fresh clothes. They checked on Felix—no change. Left his new cap on his table. They destroyed the pizza over Doc’s bed, washing it down with vending machine drinks. Then he had a shower.

He came out wearing jeans and real socks instead of the hideously ill-fitting hospital things, and a plain white t-shirt. His wound was clean and well-dressed inside a circumferential bandage that looked like a corset.

A humorless nurse named Karen, who looked like a member of the Russian Women’s Powerlifting Team, told them Doc could check out of the hospital after three. Deangela called the motel and added a room.

Len came in, beaming in his new hoodie.

Deangela hugged him, nearly disappearing from view when he hugged her back.

At 2:40 p.m., with Deangela sitting alongside his bed, Felix woke. She was on her laptop, messaging Ginni Langhorst.

*

“Why you got two of the same hats?” asked Felix, awake. She looked up and stared wide-eyed, taking several seconds to answer.

“One of them’s yours,” she said, and laid across him, crying.

*

Len had some mysterious business to attend to. They said goodbyes and exchange numbers. Farah and Deangela had to stand on tip-toes to plant kisses on his cheeks. He was far less threatening with wet eyes and a smile.

Felix had to stay on in Joy Hospital for at least another day.

Deangela, Farah, and Doc went to Joshua James for supper. Deangela drank root beer, Doc had a Heineken with a toothless caution from Farah about mixing alcohol and codeine. Farah had ice water with a shot of Two Islands rum on the side. Farah ate the perch basket. Deangela and Doc had fat, meaty Reubens.

Back at the motel, Deangela packed her toiletries.

“What’s this?” asked Farah.

“Doc needs someone to keep an eye on him tonight,” she answered.

Farah started to speak, then held her tongue.

Deangela kissed her mother and left.

Doc slept on his right side in his boxers and t-shirt. Deangela in tan boy-shorts and a wife-beater. His face brushed the back of her neck. She held his hand to her chest. He got up twice during the night to urinate and check the bandage. The second time, when he wrapped her up again, she kissed his hand, and he kissed the back of her neck. They were asleep again in moments.

79

July 20, 2025
Luce County, Michigan

The crime scene tape seems superfluous. There’s no one for miles but the four of them. Brianna Baker the new Sheriff of Luce, her deputy Finn Scranton, and Alfred Bledsoe,the acting coroner, and the witness—Grady Caldwell. Deputy Scranton takes pictures before Dr. Bledsoe lifts each bone out of the creek bed, slides it into an evidence bag, and lays it on a clean plastic tarp.

While they collect the bones, Sheriff Baker interviews Caldwell. YouTube fishing personality apparently. He found the bodies on a hike to the Two-Hearted Lakes. It’s more of a conversation than an interview, really.

“Any idea who that is?” asks Grady.

“My bet,” Brianna says, “there’s two of ’em. Fellas got lost in a storm about four years back, ya know.”

“Huntin’?”

“Yah, ya might say that.”

80

Aftermath

On the 26^th, they had a seafood birthday supper for Doc in Midland, Michigan, at a place called Café Zinc that was so shiny you almost needed sunglasses. They stayed the night at a swanky place called Hotel H.

Doc had to postpone four jobs and turn down two for his convalescence. He was back in his house by October 27^th, still wrapped in a bandage and taking antibiotics. Fearing dependency and suffering from constipation, he quit the codeine that very day.

Cedar covertly shopped the Afghanistan story—rape, murder, mission-bungling, cover-up, assassination of a journalist. Ginni sent the material through digital cutouts. It was all slightly unnecessary, because Felix, no longer giving a shit, had consented to citing him as the inside source.

“I’ll probably be dead before they can type up the arraignment.” Deangela didn’t find that funny.

The conservative papers minimized it because it impugned the reputation of the military. The liberal outlets brushed it off because it happened during the tenure of St. Obama. The story finally ran on Halloween in Nouvel Observateur, the outlet which had employed Gatson Villeneuve, the assassinated journalist. Globally, the story was scandalously effective, but in the US, the media treated it with almost theatrical skepticism and disdain—most of them had big DOD contractors as advertisers, after all—and they willingly painted the “source” as bitter and mentally impaired. Within days, the story was overshadowed by the World Series, the Omicron variant vaccine, and Jojo Siwa’s performance on Dancing with the Stars.

Farrell’s sub-unit from the Department of Defense Counter-Intelligence Task Force was quietly dismantled. Monty Farrell went back to the twice re-named Blackwater (Academi now, like it was a diploma mill). They made him an executive with a six-figure salary, and he was hospitalized a month later with deep vein thrombosis in his left leg, which almost had to be amputated.

Felix returned to Chattanooga, never having revealed where or how he’d come by the money to finance the investigation. At the end of it all, he made three deposits to Deangela’s account on $9,999 each, overruling her every objection.

“Can’t take this shit with me,” he’d said.

The Skegum investigation report went to the Michigan Attorney General’s Criminal Investigation Division without all the cut-outs and subterfuge, signed by Felix and Deangela.

Milo’s assessment: “Ripple in the pond. You never know. Glad you’re back.” He was on a cane, now. Not just as a prop.

Farah stayed at Deangela’s in Raleigh for Halloween.

The Stepford neighborhood was overrun with kids accompanied by suspicious, apprehensive suburban parents. A couple of moms and even one dad had their little ones on leashes. Deangela and Farah had carved two pumpkins into jack-o-lanterns and set them out on the front stoop like a parody of guardian lions. They did their own faces up like skulls with white grease paint. Accompanied by an excited Isis who delighted the kids and scared the parents, they handed out chocolate vampire bats with plastic whistles, the latter as a bit of spiteful humor in the face of the parents’ stifling phobias. They laughed as the whistles started screeching up and down the street. A tiny gesture of rebellion on the cocooned kiddies’ behalf.

The following day they drove to Robeson County and put fresh flowers, candy, and a mini-bottle of whiskey on Theodora’s grave at the Hall Family Cemetery southeast of Pembroke near Bear Swamp. Theodora’s stone was fresh and seemingly everlasting, but time and weather had dissolved the oldest markers leaving only whispers of names and lifetimes, reminding any who dared to look that not even memory can secure immortality.

They did the same for Abner’s marker in Durham.

On November 3^rd, they attended Mass together at St. Francis. Father Austin was distant. Fumbling. Preoccupied. One baby loosed a loud fart in the middle of his perfunctory homily that set the congregation atwitter. Another started crying inconsolably during preparation of the gifts, and an abashed dad carried her out, missing communion, during which there were electrical problems with the music. When they got home, Deangela opened her email to find a picture Felix had sent of himself, wearing the UP ball cap and giving her the peace sign.

When she showed it to Milo, he grinned and said, “Sonofabitch.”

The following day, Deangela read a Michigan story online about the arrest of a county Sheriff and two confederates for the murder of a local policeman, Pedro Correa. She called Cecelia Fulton in Montana, who’d already heard. Ceclia cried, if not for the man, for the boy. Deangela received a call less than an hour after reading the story, from Michigan Criminal Investigations, to set up an interview. She told them she’d fly into Detroit on the 6^th and meet them in Tecumseh, where she’d be staying with a friend for a few days.

81

November 12, 2021
Red Mill Road Boat Launch, Eno River, North Carolina

A raspberry dawn broke in the boughs and brambles along the water. Deangela stood on the trailer tongue, fading scratches still scoring her face, hand on the bow stop. She wore a ragged brown hoodie, baggy tattered jeans with a wallet chain, her dusty Walmart-Wellingtons, and her UP ball cap. Isis stood dutifully on the dock, tongue out and tail flapping.

A pair of mallards pummeled the water.

Farah backed the jon boat down the concrete ramp. Inside the boat were a cooler, two paddles, an anchor tied to a ringcleat on the bow, two life jackets neither of them would wear, and an enormous dirty gray tackle box. Four long slender rods with light reels jutted forward from the bow like insect antennae. The Mercury 6-horse was cocked up on the transom.

Farah set the brake. The backup and brake lights went out under the water.

Deangela unlocked the winch, fed out some strap, and unhooked the craft. A shove sent it down along the bunks and into the water, bow strap snaking through her hands. An unhurried current rippled around the stern. Golden water reflected the trees, last autumn hues clutching stripped limbs.

It was shaping to be what the old-locals called a “bluebird day,” the sky rain-washed and clear. Just days ago—in another life and world—the blizzard.

A hungry sunfish blew up the surface near the far bank to pick off an insect.

Deangela stepped up onto the dock. Farah gunned the truck forward, water cascading off trailer, and pulled straight into a parking slot.

Deangela sat on the dock with her feet across the gunwale, holding the boat against the posts. Isis jumped into the boat.

The truck went silent. All that could be heard now was water lapping at the boat. The woodland breeze smelled faintly of pawpaws and glittered with birdsong. Cardinals, always first out and last in. Waterthrush. A dour, distant jay. Chuckling rock pigeons.

The truck door chunked shut. Farah’s lavender fleece flapped, flashing a tie-dyed T. Khaki jeans and a dark blue fanny pack. On her head, the old straw boater, her Garifuna crown. She limped to the dock, left ankle still wrapped, the swelling thankfully diminishing with each passing day. The bad things pass. Then so do the good. Then so do the bad.

“All set?” asked Deangela.

“Ready, ready,” Farah replied. Farah climbed down carefully and took the back seat. She dropped the motor. Pumped the primer. Switched on the choke. The engine caught on the second pull, chopping along for a few seconds before Farah turned off the choke and gave the accelerator a couple of rowdy turns to warm the motor. Deangela dropped into the middle seat, Isis between her knees. Farah reversed into the river, making Isis brace, threw the motor into forward, and pivoted upstream, their wake spreading behind.

Heading upriver toward Red Mill Road Bridge, they maintained a lazy pace at the point of a glistening V. Isis half closed her eyes, holding her face into the breeze.

“Ya stayed up north a long time,” Farah said. “Five days?”

“I been afraid, Mama.”

“I know, Pick. Will ya go back?”

“I will.”

They passed through the last lithe phantoms of morning mist.

They passed a lone kayaker on her way downstream, a white woman with a black braid, and gave her a slow courteous berth. She smiled and waved. They waved back.

They passed long, flat mudbanks, with tangled roots like nests of yellow serpents.

They passed two old black men, bank-fishermen sitting on upturned plastic buckets.

They passed a heron standing in the shallows near a willow thicket, motionless, poised for a kill.

They passed a pile of trash abandoned along the edge of the woods.

They passed rhododendron, and pawpaws with shriveled fruit.

They passed fat toads in the mud, trumpet flowers, willow saplings, fox sparrows, and clusters of Dutchman’s breeches with wilted flowers. Autumn, death announced in bursts of beauty.

They passed a slashed easement with a high-tension power line. A skeletal colossus guarding its own path.

They passed three deer advancing in a watchful column through the pines.

They slipped right and left, evading submerged stumps, fallen trees, and sly sand flats.

Alone each with her thoughts, all these transportable eternities and transient deformities enfolding them together, neither felt compelled again to speak.

THE END