O’Brien scanned the story. The sound of a boat came from the river and mixed with the full throttle of a mockingbird in a live oak. “Glenda, the night your husband called you, when he was shot … how many gunshots did you hear?”
“Three.”
“Are you sure?”
“Absolutely. I’ve heard those shots fire in my nightmares for many, many years, sir. It’s something I will never forget.”
“This story quotes a deputy sheriff saying Billy was shot once.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
O’Brien’s cell rang. “Excuse me,” he said to Glenda and Abby Lawson. It was Nick Cronus. “Sean, I got a call from some guy who said he’d give me a million dollars for the GPS numbers to the wreck. This is gettin’ more crazy by the minute-”
“Nick, I’ll call you in a minute. Keep the return number of the caller.”
“Can’t. Came in as an unknown number. Not traceable.”
O’Brien said nothing.
“Another guy called and said I looked like a towel head on TV, a terrorist.”
“I’ll get back with you in a few minutes, Nick.” O’Brien ended the call, looked at Glenda Lawson and, again, said, “The newspaper story indicates one bullet fired.”
“They were wrong.”
“Did they do an autopsy on your husband?”
“No, sir. I don’t know why.”
“Did your husband … did Billy have a gun?”
“He carried a pistol when he came back from the war. The war changed him.”
“Wars can do that. Do you know if his gun was fired that night? Did you hear him return fire, or did someone take his gun and use it to kill him?”
The old woman looked out the screen porch, her eyes falling on the river, her thoughts flowing through decades lost without the one she had loved. “All three gunshots sounded the same … and I’d heard Billy shooting lots of times at cans he’d set up in our backyard. His gun didn’t sound like the shots I heard that awful night.”
“Who investigated your husband’s death? And can you remember what was said?”
Glenda watched Max sleeping on a rocking chair. “I had a dachshund once,” she said softly. “She was such a fine little dog. Slept in my bed. Does your dog sleep in your bed?”
“She’s a bed hog,” O’Brien said, letting the old woman take her time.
“So was mine … you asked me who investigated Billy’s death, right?”
“Yes.”
“Well, let me see. The sheriff, at least his deputies did … then there was a fella from the FBI … and some men from the Navy, and one from the Army because Billy was still enlisted, but on disability ‘till his leg was properly healed.”
“And they told you Billy died in a robbery … a mugging?”
“That’s what I was told.”
“Did the sheriff tell you that?”
“Yes, at least the deputy assigned to the case. An FBI agent told me that, too. Even after I insisted it wasn’t a mugging … not after what Billy told me. But the police, especially the FBI fella, didn’t pay me any mind. Billy wasn’t mugged. He was murdered.”
“Your husband was fishing that night. How much money could a twenty-one-year-old fisherman have on him to get him killed?”
Abby said, “Exactly. My grandfather might have had a couple of dollars on him. Who would kill a man for that, steal his truck, and then abandon it?”
“Strange,” O’Brien said. “No one was ever arrested or even questioned, right?”
“Right,” said Glenda. “His killer, or killers, walked free.”
“Maybe not,” O’Brien said. “Not if your husband was killed by one of the Germans, and it was their submarine sunk that night.”
“Oh dear.”
Abby said, “Your finding the submarine proves it!”
“I didn’t say I found a sub.”
“If you did, it might be connected to my grandfather’s murder. Maybe whoever gunned down granddaddy was killed when that U-boat sank.”
O’Brien was silent. He stared down to the river, glanced at the yellowed newspaper story, and then said, “Look, Abby … Glenda … I think it was tragic that your grandfather-your husband-was killed. If he was murdered, it was more than sixty years ago, and whoever did it is probably dead. If it’s tied to German soldiers landing on the beach, the police, Navy, FBI and the Army, should have a record.”
Abby shook her head. “We couldn’t find it. FBI people in the Miami office told us they checked records, files stored in Washington and couldn’t find anything about my grandfather’s killing. Navy says they did get a report of a U-boat sighting that night, the call from my grandmother, and said they dispatched a gunboat and two planes but saw nothing suspicious. If you found a German sub, it’s the closest thing we have to bringing closure to an old wound. Not so much for me, I never knew granddaddy. He never got a chance to know the baby he’d fathered, my mother. When she was alive, we never had closure. But we might find it for an eighty-eight-year-old woman who never remarried, raised a daughter and granddaughter by herself, practiced the Ten Commandments better than anyone I’ve ever known, and still says goodnight to her dead husband’s picture by her bed. In that photo, he’s dressed in his Army uniform, and he was buried in it.”
“I’m not a homicide detective anymore. I’m trying a new career as a fishing guide. I think what happened to your grandfather is horrible. If it was connected to a sub on the bottom of the sea, it doesn’t mean you’d ever prove anything. No witnesses, or if there were, probably long dead. If the authorities covered up his death, it’s a shame. Without knowing why-a probable reason-it’s hard to prove it ever happened. I wish there was something I could do-”
“I said I’d pay you,” Abby said
“It has nothing to do with money.”
“Leslie told me you once said to her you felt an obligation to speak for the dead-the ones murdered because they had no one else. Sorry for wasting your time.” She stood and started to help her grandmother out of the chair.
Glenda Lawson took a small step toward O’Brien. “Sir, my husband gave his life for his country. He died on American soil trying to let us know we’d been invaded. My Billy was a hero, and they said he was killed in a robbery. The killers robbed him of his life, dignity … they robbed him of our unborn daughter. And they robbed Abby. I’ve often thought how the history books tell us about Paul Revere, the man who warned us that the British were coming. He saved Boston and became a hero. What about my husband, sir, what if he saved the nation?”
O’Brien was silent.
“They tell me my time left in this world’s short … I’ve lived a good life … sometimes a lonely life … but a good life. A free life. I’d like to think my husband calling that night had something to do with that. If you did find that submarine, it proves what Billy told me that night. Whatever those men buried was worth more to them than my husband’s life. Was his death in vain?” Her green eyes were alive, searching. Her nostrils flared, and she made a clicking sound with her mouth.
“Come on Grandma,” Abby said.
“I apologize, sir, for my show of temper. I just want to know who killed Billy. If he was shot by our enemy at a time of war, a war that had just ended, then why didn’t our military stand up for him when he stood for us and everything that is American?”
O’Brien listened for a half minute to the sound of her car as Abby drove away. He picked up his cell and called Dave Collins. “I have no idea if a murder mystery that happened sixty-seven years ago can be connected to the discovery Nick and I found. Maybe you can check your sources.”
“Sixty-seven years ago? What do you have?”
“You might want to take notes, Dave. This one begins May 19, 1945. It’s a war story that starts after the war officially ended.”