6
Water drips from live oak trees and palmettos at the edge of the parking lot, and I smell rain and the sweet perfume of flowering shrubs, their petals littering the earth like bright confetti. The air is thick and hot, and the sun glowers intermittently through roiling dark clouds to the west, and I climb back into the cargo van, marveling that nobody stopped me.
As Officer Macon escorted me out of Bravo Pod and along a sidewalk still wet from the storm, he gave no indication that anything was out of line or even out of the ordinary, but I didn’t believe him. I couldn’t imagine he or someone, perhaps the warden herself, wasn’t aware that Kathleen Lawler had slipped me a communication I’m not supposed to have. Back at the checkpoint, where my hand was scanned under a UV light, revealing the password snowstamped on my skin, nothing was said beyond Officer Macon’s thanking me for coming, as if my visiting the Georgia Prison for Women was some sort of favor to the place. I told him Kathleen was afraid for her safety, and he smiled and said the inmates love to tell “tall tales,” and that the very reason she’d been moved was to ensure her safety. I said good-bye and left.
I’m about to conclude that my original suspicion is correct. My conversation with Kathleen might have been audio-recorded, but she and I were not captured by a video camera. Otherwise, when she silently flicked the kite across the table to me, it would have been observed by corrections officers, at the very least. Most certainly I would have been marched back to the warden’s ivy-infested office, where I would have been forced to surrender the folded piece of paper that I’m aware of in my back pocket as if it is a rock or something hot. It also occurs to me that Kathleen wouldn’t have sneaked anything to me had she worried about being caught, and I have the growing suspicion she is part of a manipulation more treacherous than anything I might have imagined. Although I’m not ready to decide she just got the best of me, I realize she might have.
Cranking the engine, I remove what Kathleen gave to me as I scan the parking lot, making sure no one is nearby and watching. I’m aware of the mesh-covered narrow windows in the blue metal-roofed pods, of the columned red-brick administrative building I just left. Steam rises from wet pavement and is carried on the heavy, warm air through my open window, and in a far corner of the crowded lot I notice a black Mercedes wagon reminiscent of a hearse, and a woman sitting inside it with the engine off, talking on a cell phone. It’s hot and muggy to be inside a car with no air-conditioning running, but her windows are cracked. She doesn’t seem to be paying any attention to me. I’m uneasy and unsettled, and by this point I believe I have reason to be.
Ever since Benton dropped me off at Logan early this morning, I’ve had the sensation that I’m being monitored or tampered with, yet I’m aware of no tangible evidence that might prove it. But the feeling has gotten stronger because of other odd things. This ridiculous van I never reserved, dirty and smelly, its glove box crammed full of Bojangles’ napkins and charter-boat brochures. When I tried repeatedly to call Bryce to complain, leaving him the pointed message that I can’t believe a high-end concierge rental company would have something like this in their fleet, he never called back. I’ve had no communications from him all day, as if my chief of staff is avoiding me. Then there’s strange information I’ve been given. And now this.
I smooth open a piece of white paper that was folded into a diamond shape no bigger than a throat lozenge. Written in blue ball-point ink is a phone number that is vaguely familiar at first, and then I’m jolted by recognition. “USE PAY PHONE,” the note says in tiny block printing, and there is nothing else, just that underlined directive and Jaime Berger’s cell phone number. The late afternoon is darker, rain starting again, tapping the metal roof of the van, and I turn on the windshield wipers. They leave greasy arches as they slowly, loudly sweep across the glass, and I retrieve my shoulder bag from under the seat. I watch the black Mercedes wagon drive out of the lot, noticing a Navy Diver bumper sticker on the back as I get a strange feeling. Then I realize why.
My bag has been gone through. Am I sure? I think so. Yes, I’m certain, I decide, as I reconstruct what I did when I first arrived several hours earlier. I sent Benton a text message and zipped my phone into the rear pocket of my bag, where I always keep my wallet, my credentials, my keys, and other valuables. Now my phone is in the side compartment. How simple and safe to search the van while I was inside the prison. Officers had my keys, and I was locked up in Bravo Pod, talking to Kathleen, but I can’t think of anything important that someone might have found. My iPhone and iPad are password-protected, so no one could have gotten into those, and I can’t think of anything else that would matter. What might someone have been looking for? Perhaps case files, it occurs to me. Or, more likely, something that might indicate I came here today for reasons other than what I told Tara Grimm. I unlock my phone.
My first impulse is to call my niece, Lucy, and bluntly ask her if she’s been in touch with Jaime Berger. It’s possible Lucy has information that might give me a hint about what is going on, about what I’ve just walked into, but I can’t bring myself to do it. Lucy hasn’t talked about Jaime since all of us were together last, some six months ago, during the holidays, and she has yet to admit they’ve broken up, when I know they must have. My niece wouldn’t have moved from New York to Boston if there hadn’t been a personal reason.
It wasn’t about money. Lucy doesn’t need money. It wasn’t about her wanting to bring her extraordinary computer expertise to the Cambridge Forensic Center, which just began taking cases last year. She doesn’t need to work for me or the CFC. Her decision to relocate her entire existence most likely was about fearing a loss she believed was inevitable, and she did what she’s always done so well. She aggressively avoided pain and dodged rejection. She probably ended the relationship before Jaime had the chance, and by the time Lucy did so, she’d already set up a new life for herself in Boston. My niece has a habit of telling you she’s leaving after she’s already gone.
I drive away from the GPFW, going out the same way I came in, past the nursery and the salvage yard, wondering where I’m going to find a pay phone. There isn’t one on every corner these days, and I’m not sure I should call Jaime or anyone else. Benton worried that I was being set up, and I’m about to conclude he is right. By whom and for what reason? Maybe by Dawn Kincaid’s defense team. Maybe by something far more sinister. Dawn Kincaid tried to murder me and failed, so now she wants to finish the job. The thought gusts through my mind like an arctic blast, and my head is beginning to pound as if my hangover is back.
You should get as far from here as possible.It’s too late to fly out of the Savannah — Hilton Head Airport, but I could drive to Atlanta, where I’m sure I can get a flight to Boston tonight. In this damn cargo van? I envison myself broken down on the roadside near a swamp in the middle of nowhere and decide my wisest course is to stay in Savannah as planned. Don’t do anything rash. Be deliberate and logical,I tell myself, as I drive in the rain, the van chugging and misfiring, slowing down and speeding up on its own while its worn-out wiper blades smear the glass with loud rubbery swipes. My head is aching like a bad tooth, and I’m out of Advil, having taken the last of it earlier today when I was traveling.
I roar past a truck dealership and an auto body shop, and every place I pass feels isolated and impenetrable and ominous, as if the world is in a lockdown. I’ve not noticed another car in miles and have the same eerie feeling I get right before something bad happens. A stillness, a shifting of reality, a sense of foreboding that always precedes a tragic announcement, a brutal case coming in, a horror of a scene in the room just ahead. My thoughts find their way back to Lola Daggette.