After two hours, they began to descend, and Lacy took in the view of the ocean and the islands. They touched down at 11:40. Gunther had called ahead for a courtesy car at general aviation. He drove and Lacy navigated from a tourist map. Cooley was still somewhere around Tallahassee and talking to Carlita. As they approached the Key Largo Harbor Marina, Cooley gave Gunther her number to facilitate the pickup. The harbor was busy with sailors heading out to sea and fishing boats arriving with their morning catches. A dive boat had just docked and a dozen divers were unloading their gear. Lacy stayed in the car and watched everything as Gunther strolled along the dock, just killing time and admiring boats. Carlita stepped off the Conspirator and managed to smile as if all was well. She had three bags: a backpack, a nylon sack stuffed with what appeared to be clothing, and Myers’s olive courier bag. Gunther grabbed two of them and they casually walked back to the parking lot. In the car, Lacy scanned the entire marina and saw no one who appeared to be watching them. Carlita was thrilled to see her, a familiar face.
Gunther, always quick with an opinion, believed that after five days with no contact whatsoever, the people responsible for Myers’s disappearance were long gone. If they had wanted to chat with Carlita or rummage through the boat, they would have made a move before now. An hour after leaving the airport, they returned to general aviation, quickly loaded the Baron, and took off at 1:15. Lacy called Geismar but he did not answer. Must be partying with his mother-in-law. She sent a text saying the mission was accomplished.
Lacy and Carlita sat in the rear of the cabin, close together. Once airborne, Carlita began crying. Lacy held her hand and assured her she was now safe. Carlita wanted to know if Lacy had heard anything about Myers. No, there had been no word. Nothing at all. What would happen to the boat? Lacy said she wasn’t sure. The plan was to notify the authorities that Greg Myers was missing and let them go about their business. She quizzed Carlita about the boat: How long had she been living on it? Where did Myers buy it, or lease it? Did he own it outright or was a bank involved? Did anyone else ever visit them on the boat?
She knew very little. She had been living on it for about a year, but knew nothing of where it came from. Myers, she said, did not talk about his business. Occasionally, he would go ashore to meet someone but always returned within an hour. He was extremely careful, and fearful. He did not make mistakes. When he disappeared he was just going to the marina for a drink, nothing more. He was not supposed to be meeting anyone. He simply vanished.
When they leveled off and Key Largo was far behind, Carlita stopped the tears and grew quiet. Lacy asked if they could keep the courier bag and the backpack. Carlita said sure, she wanted no part of his paperwork. She said Myers had been careful about what he left on the boat because it could be searched, either by the bad guys or by the authorities. Using the postal service, never the overnight delivery services, he’d sent a lot of paperwork to his brother in Myrtle Beach. She was not sure what he’d left behind on the boat but was pretty sure it was not important.
An hour later, they landed in Sarasota. Gunther had called ahead for a cab, and Lacy handed Carlita enough money to get to her place in Tampa. Lacy thanked her and hugged her and said good-bye, knowing she would never see her again.
Back in the air, with Gunther occupied with flying, Lacy opened the courier bag. She pulled out Myers’s thin laptop and turned it on, but was stopped at the pass code. She found a prepaid cell phone and some files. One contained the boat’s registration, to a company in the Bahamas, along with warranties, operating procedures, and a thick stack of fine print about insurance. Another file was filled with old cases involving corrupt judges. Lacy found not a single word about McDover, the Tappacola, Cooley, the mole, or herself. The backpack was just as clean; nothing but old research and newspaper clippings about Ramsey Mix, a.k.a. Greg Myers. Evidently, he kept the current materials somewhere onshore, at least the written ones. She suspected his laptop was loaded with evidence that could have been devastating in the wrong hands.
When they landed in Tallahassee, Lacy was hoping Gunther might simply stay on the plane and continue back to Atlanta. Apparently, that never crossed his mind. As they drove to her apartment, it became clear that Gunther now considered himself an active member of the BJC investigative team. He planned to stay a few more days, to keep an eye on his sister.
Lacy called Geismar again with a full update. They agreed to meet early Monday morning. Late in the afternoon, as Gunther paced around her terrace calling one partner or lawyer or accountant or banker after another, Lacy was returning e-mails when she got a surprise from Allie Pacheco. His text was simply “Got time for a drink?”
She responded, “Unofficial, after hours, no business?”
He replied, “Of course.”
But business was exactly what she had in mind. She invited him to her apartment, warned him that her brother was there and that things would not be that private.
Pacheco arrived in shorts and a polo at 7:30. Lacy poured him a beer and introduced him to Gunther, who wanted to grill him. The unofficial status of the little rendezvous lasted for about five minutes, until Gunther blurted, “We gotta talk about Myers.”
Pacheco put down his glass, looked at Lacy, and asked, “Okay, what’s up with Myers?”
“He’s been missing for five days,” she said. “That’s his laptop on the counter. We got it off his boat this morning in Key Largo.”
“It’s a long story,” Gunther said.
Pacheco stared at both of them. He raised both hands, showed them his palms, said, “This is way off-limits, okay? Tell me all you can tell me, then I’ll decide what to do with it.”
Gunther was remarkably quiet as Lacy told the story.
–
Sipping his second beer, Pacheco finally said, “The boat needs to be secured, and to do that the police need to be notified. There’s no federal issue here, not yet anyway, so we can’t do it.”
“But you can notify the police, right?” Lacy asked. “I’d rather not make the call, because then I would have to answer a lot of questions. I’d rather not have my name attached to a missing person case.”
“You’re already attached to it because you have his laptop and files.”
“But they have nothing to do with his disappearance.”
“You don’t know that. You don’t know what’s in the laptop. There may be a trail there, some reference to a meeting the day he disappeared.”
“Great,” Gunther said. “We’ll give it to you, everything, and you give it to the police. They’ll take things far more seriously if they’re notified by the FBI.”
“That might work,” Pacheco said. “Is there a chance Myers simply walked away? Given his past, and his present, that’s not completely far-fetched.”
Lacy said, “Sure, I’ve thought about it. Maybe something frightened him. Maybe he got tired of the boat, or the woman, or both, and decided to vanish. He was at least thinking about dropping the complaint. When he came here to my apartment, he offered to drop it and walk away. He was sorry about Hugo, blamed himself, and said he wished he’d never started all this. He could have ditched the records, scrubbed his computer, and hit the road.”
“You don’t believe that,” Gunther said.
“No, I don’t. I’ve had this conversation with Cooley, and he’ll never be convinced that Myers would run and hide again. Myers needs the money. He’s an ex-con who’s sixty years old and without much of a future. He was banking on a huge windfall from the whistle-blower statute. He knew that law inside and out and was already counting his money. He believed McDover and Dubose have stolen tens of millions and that a lot of the money can be recovered. I don’t know how he paid for the boat but he was very proud of it. He loved island hopping and puttering around the Keys. He was a happy guy about to strike it rich. So, no, I don’t think he walked away.”