“I’m more concerned about what’s going on inside your head than what’s growing out of it. What’s the matter with you?”
“Nothing.”
Headly just looked at him, not having to say anything.
Dawson left his chair and moved to the window, flipping open the shutters and looking out onto the well-manicured patch of lawn. “I talked to Sarah when I passed through London.”
The Headlys’s daughter was older than he, but, while growing up, the two families had spent so much time together that they’d been much like brother and sister, grudgingly caring about each other. She and her husband lived in England, where they worked for an international bank.
“She told us you’d ‘passed through’ without staying long enough to go see them.”
“Flight schedule didn’t allow time.”
Headly harrumphed as if he didn’t accept that as a plausible excuse to forgo a visit. And it wasn’t.
“Begonias are thriving.”
“They’re impatiens.”
“Oh. How’s the—”
“I asked you a question,” Headly said with annoyance. “What’s the problem? And don’t tell me ‘nothing.’”
“I’m fine.”
“Like hell you are. I watched a zombie movie on TV last night. You’d fit right in.”
Dawson sighed over his godfather’s tenacity. He didn’t turn around, but he propped his shoulder against the window frame. “I’m tired is all. Spend nine months in Afghanistan—trust me, it’ll wear you out. Hostile terrain. Temperature extremes. Bugs that bite. No booze. No women except for the service members, and hooking up with one of them is tricky. A good way for both partners to get into some seriously deep shit. Hardly makes getting laid worth the hassle.”
“You’ve had time since you got back to find an obliging lady.”
“Ah, but there’s a problem with that.” He closed the shutters, turned around, and grinned. “You got the last great girl.”
The levity fell flat. The worry line between Headly’s thick eyebrows didn’t relax.
Dropping the pretense, Dawson returned to the chair, spread his knees, and stared at the floor.
Headly asked, “Are you sleeping?”
“It’s getting better.”
“In other words, you’re not.”
Dawson raised his head and said testily, “It’s getting better. It’s not easy jumping back into the thick of things, returning to an ordinary schedule.”
“Okay. I’ll buy that. What else?”
Dawson pushed back his hair. “This Harriet thing. She’s gonna make my life miserable.”
“Only if you let her.”
“She’s sending me to Idaho, for chrissake.”
“What have you got against Idaho?”
“Not a damn thing. Nor do I have anything against the vision-impaired. Or hot-air balloonists. But it’s not my story. It’s not even my
kind
of story. So forgive me if I’m finding it a little hard to work up any enthusiasm for it.”
“Think you could work up some for a better story?”
Headly hadn’t asked that casually. There was substance behind the question. So, in spite of his dejection, Dawson felt a tingle of anticipation. Because Headly hadn’t been only his godfather and lifelong good friend, he’d also been his invaluable and unnamed source within the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
Taking his silence for interest, Headly continued. “Savannah, Georgia, and its environs. Marine Captain Jeremy Wesson, a decorated war veteran, one tour in Iraq, two in Afghanistan. After returning from his last deployment, he retired from the corps, and, by all accounts, went off the rails.
“Fifteen months ago, give or take, he got tangled up in a messy affair with a married woman, one Darlene Strong. Husband Willard caught them, and it didn’t end well for the illicit lovers. Willard Strong goes on trial for murder the day after tomorrow. Chatham County Courthouse. You should be there to cover the trial.”
Dawson was already shaking his head.
“Why not?” Headly asked.
“Summertime in Savannah.”
“Look at your calendar. As of today, it’s September.”
“Still, no thank you. It’s hot down there. Humid. I’d rather go to Idaho. Besides, crime isn’t my specialty. And frankly, I’ve had enough of the military for a while. I don’t want to write about a dead Marine. I’ve been doing that for the past nine months.
“In fact, maybe Harriet’s assignment is a blessing in disguise. That feel-good story may be just the tonic I need. Something hopeful. Positive. Uplifting. No severed limbs, or blood-soaked fatigues, or flag-draped caskets involved.”
“I haven’t told you the hook.”
Sourly, Dawson asked, “What’s the hook?”
“Police obtained Wesson’s semen off Darlene’s clothing. This, of course, to help make the prosecutor’s case against the cuckolded husband, Willard.”
“Okay.”
“So the RANC in Savannah is a Bureau buddy of mine, former New Yorker, big baseball fan named Cecil Knutz.”
“‘Rank’?”
“Resident Agent in Charge. Top dog in the resident agency there.”
“Okay.”
“Anyway, Knutz saw the report from CODIS. Wesson’s DNA got a hit, a match.”
“He was already in the system?”
“He was. Has been for a while, in fact.”
Headly paused to take a sip of his drink. Realizing that was a tactic used to build suspense, Dawson said, “I’m on pins and needles.”
He set down his glass and leaned toward Dawson. “Captain Jeremy Wesson’s DNA matched that which we retrieved off a baby blanket found inside the Golden Branch house.”
That wasn’t a mere hook. It was a grappling hook that found purchase in the center of Dawson’s chest. Dumbfounded, he stared at Headly.
Headly said, “Before you ask, there’s no possibility of mistake. The match was ninety-nine-point-nine-and-down-to-the-nth-degree identical. In other words, the recently obtained sample and the one from 1976 came from one and the same individual. We got Flora’s DNA that day, too. We know she mothered the child whose DNA was on the baby blanket. And Jeremy Wesson’s age fits. Indisputably, he was Flora and Carl’s son.”
Dawson stood up, paced a few steps, then turned back to Headly. As though reading the myriad questions racing through Dawson’s mind, he said, “Judging by your expression, I see that I don’t need to spell out the significance of this to you.”
Although Gary Headly had enjoyed a distinguished career, to his mind all his accomplishments had been overshadowed by what he perceived as his one failure—to bring Carl Wingert and Flora Stimel to justice. It had plagued his career, and now it was contaminating his retirement.
That was a cruelty that his godfather didn’t deserve, and it made Dawson angry. “This Knutz, why’d he tip you to this?”
“He knows my interest. Worked with me when I investigated one of their jobs in Tennessee in the late eighties. He’s aware of my impending retirement and notified me only as a courtesy to a colleague. He was careful not to divulge too much, but he did tell me that he’s been digging into Jeremy Wesson’s background looking for a link to Carl and Flora.”
Dawson raised his brows in silent query.
“Nothing. Jeremy Wesson’s birth certificate—a copy he used to enlist—is from Ohio. Says he was born to and reared by Mr. and Mrs. So-and-So Wesson. He graduated high school in the town where he grew up. Earned a degree at Texas Tech. Joined the Marines. His history looks commonplace until he wigged out and got mixed up with a redneck’s wife.”
“No leanings toward domestic terrorism?”
“None apparent.”
“What’s Knutz’s take?”
“He advised me to leave it alone. The Bureau has bigger fish to fry these days. Nobody really gives a shit about Carl and Flora anymore. The consensus is that they’re probably dead. That burglary at the armory in New Mexico was the last crime attributed to them. That was in ’96.”
“Seventeen years ago. A lot can happen in that amount of time.”
“Doesn’t mean they’re dead.”
“But with no indication that they’re still alive, it’s logical to assume otherwise.”
“Logic and assumption be damned. I want to know, don’t you?”
“At this late date, what possible difference does it make?”
“It makes a hell of a difference to me!”
Dawson sliced the air with his hands. “Okay. I get that. But this decorated Marine, who might have been their son—”
“He was. I know it.”
“No you don’t.”
“The DNA says he was.”
“It isn’t foolproof.”
“As good as.”
“All right, even if he was their kid—”
“Aren’t you curious to know what happened to him after Golden Branch, where he’s been?”
“Not in the least.”
“I don’t believe that.”
“Believe it. What good would digging into it—”
“I thought you’d want to.”
“I don’t.”
“Then do it for me.”
“Why? He’s
dead
. End of story.”
“It could be the biggest story of your career.”
“It’s certainly the biggest of yours!”
Simultaneously, they realized they’d been shouting. Headly glanced toward the door as though expecting to see his wife there, coming to check on the commotion. Dawson brought his voice down to a more reasonable level. “If you want to know the rest of the story, why don’t
you
go to the trial in Savannah?”
“Because Eva would divorce me,” he grumbled. “Besides, like I told you, I’m as good as out of the Bureau. If I went meddling down there, I’d look pathetic. Like a hanger-on who doesn’t know when his time is up.”
Dawson ran his fingers through his hair and released a sigh of agitation. He loved Headly. He knew how badly his godfather wanted closure on the defining incident of his career. But he was asking too much. Dawson was exhausted and disheartened by his experiences overseas. Even on his good days, his nerves felt raw and exposed. The last thing he needed was additional aggravation, like dredging up this unfinished saga. What possible good could come of it? Whether or not Jeremy Wesson was Carl and Flora’s child, it didn’t make one iota of difference.
Quietly he said, “I’m sorry. Even if there was no Harriet in my life sending me someplace else on another assignment, I wouldn’t go to Savannah. Your pal Knutz is right. Some things should be left alone.”
Headly gave him a searching look, then his shoulders slumped with acceptance of Dawson’s mind being firmly made up. He tossed back the remainder of his drink and said no more about it. Shortly after that, Eva extended Dawson an invitation to stay for dinner. He declined, using as his excuse the need to pack for his trip to Idaho. Keeping eye contact with them to a minimum, he beat a hasty retreat.
He was leaking anxious sweat by the time he got into his car. At the first traffic light, he took another pill, washing it down with the lukewarm water left in the bottle. Rush-hour traffic out of DC into Virginia didn’t improve his mood, making him really on edge by the time he let himself into his Alexandria apartment.
He was tugging off his boots when his cell phone chirped, alerting him to a text message. It was from Headly:
There’s a clincher
.
He knew he was being baited, but curiosity won out over his better judgment. He texted back.
What’s the clincher?
The reply was quick in coming.
J Wesson only presumed dead. Body never found.
M
r. Jackson, are you ready to call your next witness?”
The assistant DA stood. “I am, Your Honor. I call Amelia Nolan.”
Like the other spectators, Dawson turned as a bailiff opened the double doors at the back of the courtroom and motioned in the former Mrs. Jeremy Wesson.
Today was the third day of the trial. The first witness this morning had been a veterinarian, a Dr. Somebody—Dawson had his name in his notes for referral if needed—who had droned on forever about the digestive processes of dogs, specifically pit bulls.
It took the better part of two hours for the prosecutor to wade through all the scientific rigmarole and get to the crucial point: bits and pieces of Darlene Strong had been found in the digestive tracts of three of Willard Strong’s pack of illegal fighting dogs, which had been put down in order to search for evidence.
The second person to testify, the county medical examiner, had confirmed that those bits and pieces corresponded with the ones missing from what had been left of the victim’s cadaver, which police had discovered locked inside the dogs’ pen.
Darlene hadn’t been killed by the dogs, but the state was asking for the death penalty, so Lemuel Jackson, a shrewd and meticulous prosecutor with a double-digit number of convictions, had wanted to impress upon the jury how heinous the crime had been. He’d wanted it on the record that her body had been fed to Willard’s dogs, and since the animals were half-starved in order to make them fiercer competitors in the fighting rings…
The implication had made many of the jurors go a little green.
Blood samples taken from the ground inside the caged area, as well as a piece of scalp with hair attached found inside one dog’s intestines, suggested that Jeremy Wesson had met the same fate.
By the time the defense attorney, Mike Gleason, had stumbled through an ineffectual cross-examination of the ME, it was almost twelve o’clock. The judge called for a lunch recess until one thirty, although Dawson thought it doubtful that anyone in the courtroom would have much of an appetite. Certainly not one that would require an hour and a half to appease.
But now they were back, and the third witness of the day had been summoned into the courtroom.
For background, Dawson had read news articles about the crime. He supposed he’d glanced at the photographs of the ex Mrs. Wesson that had accompanied some of those write-ups, but he really hadn’t paid attention.
Suddenly he was.
The woman walking up the short center aisle wasn’t at all what he’d expected. He’d seen Flora Stimel’s Wanted posters and had imagined that Jeremy Wesson’s ex-wife would be of a type similar to that of his mother. He’d expected her to be coarse, tough, and hard-looking.
But from her delicate bone structure to the pale right hand she raised to be sworn in, this woman was the polar opposite. She outclassed everyone in the courtroom, Dawson included. Dawson especially.
She was dressed in an ivory-colored form-fitting skirt, with a blouse of the same color but of softer material, topped by a sapphire-blue jacket. Her auburn hair was pulled into a low ponytail, but not so tightly as to prevent a few loose strands from framing her face. Her only visible jewelry were a pair of diamond stud earrings and a wristwatch. She struck the perfect note for a courtroom appearance, being neither too feminine and fussy nor too structured and severe.
As a journalist, he would have been interested in Jeremy Wesson’s ex no matter what. There were a thousand questions he wanted to ask her, if not for his own elucidation, then certainly for Headly’s.
But the woman about to testify awakened a different kind of curiosity in him, and he resented it, because he didn’t need an additional complication, the worst possible one being the loss of his professional objectivity, on which he prided himself.
He cursed Headly again for dragging him into this. He hadn’t wanted to come, but knew he had to. After receiving the taunting text from Headly, he’d packed his duffel bag. The following morning, rather than using the ticket to Idaho that had been foisted on him, he’d boarded a flight to Savannah.
While waiting in the rental-car line, he’d called Harriet.
“Are you already in Boise?”
“I took a detour.”
He envisioned her seated behind her desk, smoke coming out her ears. “I assigned you a story, Dawson.”
“I’ve got a better one.”
“What is it?”
“For now, it’s a secret.”
“
Where
is it?”
“I’m hot on its trail.”
“Dammit, Dawson!”
“I’ll be in touch.” And he clicked off before the people around him could hear the obscene invectives being shouted through his phone.
For the time being, he was covering his own expenses, so he’d booked a room in a midpriced downtown hotel. After taking a cold shower, he’d raided the minibar, turned on ESPN, and settled down on the bed with a room-service cheeseburger and his laptop.
He’d searched out websites that contained material pertaining to the crime for which Willard Strong was being tried. On every level, it was a disturbing case, and by the time Dawson had finished researching it, he’d developed a tightness in his chest that he wanted to attribute to the Tabasco with which he’d doused his cheeseburger. But he knew that wasn’t the cause of the constriction.
He asked himself for the hundredth time why he’d let Headly rope him into becoming involved. But when he had stripped away all the plausible explanations for his capitulation, the truth stood alone, and it had nothing to do with Headly, but everything to do with himself.
Truth be known, he’d practically dared himself to come, as a kind of therapy.
Since his return from Afghanistan, he’d been unable to shake off the effects of spending almost a year in a war zone. They clung to him like a spiderweb, so fine as to be invisible, yet as tenacious as steel and, so far, impossible to escape.
Of course he was nowhere near as gone as Jeremy Wesson had been. No doubt the captain had suffered from the real thing, PTSD. It had cost him his family and ultimately his life, making him an ideal subject for a timely and relevant article, one certain to induce strong emotions in the reader.
But it was also the subject Dawson wished most to avoid. It cut too close to home.
And then there was the other element that made this story personally involving. Had Jeremy Wesson been Carl Wingert and Flora Stimel’s son? Were they or were they not dead? Dawson didn’t care. But Headly did, and he felt an obligation to his godfather to take the investigation at least one step further.
So, he’d come. And looking at it from a strictly journalistic standpoint, Jeremy Wesson’s life was a treasure trove of material. How could he possibly pass up writing the provocative story of a man who’d entered the world as the offspring of fugitives from justice, had experienced a seemingly normal upbringing in the Midwest, had honorably served his country, had returned home from war emotionally and psychologically wrecked, and then had been violently murdered?
It was an American version of a Greek tragedy.
With that in mind on his first night in Savannah, he’d shut down his laptop, washed down a sleeping pill with a slug of Pepto-Bismol to neutralize the Tabasco, and gone to bed. Five minutes later, he got up and took another pill, swallowing it with a bottle of Jack Daniel’s from the minibar.
He’d had the nightmare anyway. Twice.
Consequently he was groggy and ill-tempered for the first day of Willard Strong’s trial. He’d arrived at the courthouse early—not to claim a front-row seat, but to secure one in the back row near the exit so he could make a speedy and unobtrusive getaway if he felt the need.
As soon as court had adjourned that first day, he’d headed straight for River Street, where he spent the remainder of the evening cruising the bars. Women were available, and sex would provide at least a temporary reprieve from the morbid thoughts that haunted him, but he hadn’t acted on any of the invitations, subtle or overt, that he received.
He made friendships that lasted only for as long as a drink or two, limited conversations to impersonal topics, and stretched out the time until the bars closed and he had nothing else to do except return to the hotel room, and to the hard, unforgiving pillow where night sweats and bad dreams awaited.
Up to this moment, he’d been bored with the trial and was trying to devise a graceful way to disengage himself from everything relating to it.
The appearance of Wesson’s ex-wife changed that.
* * *
Amelia’s left palm felt damp against the Bible on which she swore to tell the whole truth. Then she stepped up into the witness box and took her seat.
Jackson approached her. “Ms. Nolan, thank you for appearing today. Will you please state your name for the court?”
“Amelia Nolan.”
“That’s your maiden name?”
“Yes. Following my divorce from Jeremy, I reverted to using it.”
He smiled. “Nolan is an honorable name in this state.”
“Thank you.”
He glanced over his shoulder toward the defense table. “Ms. Nolan, do you recognize the defendant?”
For the first time since entering the courtroom, she looked toward Willard Strong. He sat with his shoulders hunched, his eyes peering at her from beneath the ledge of his prominent brow. His hair had been neatly combed. He was dressed in a suit that appeared to be two sizes too small. If she had to use a single word to describe him, it would be
brutish
.
She acknowledged recognition. “Jeremy introduced us.”
“When did this initial meeting take place?”
“February twenty-second of 2011.”
“You recall the exact date?”
“It was my older son, Hunter’s, fourth birthday.”
“Can you please tell the court the circumstances of this meeting?”
“Jeremy and I were separated. I had temporary custody of our two sons while our divorce was pending, but I had agreed to let Jeremy attend Hunter’s party. When he arrived, Willard and Darlene Strong were with him.”
“You hadn’t met them before then?”
“No, but I knew their names. Jeremy had talked about them.”
“How would you describe them that morning?”
“You mean—”
“The condition of the three when they arrived at your home.”
“They were intoxicated.”
The defense counsel stood. “Objection.”
“I’ll rephrase,” Jackson said before the judge could rule. “Ms. Nolan, did you get the impression that the three of them had been drinking excessively?”
Gleason was about to object again, when the judge held up her hand. “Ms. Nolan may answer.”
Jackson motioned for her to proceed.
“I’d seen Jeremy intoxicated before,” she said. “Many times. He wasn’t a pleasant and happy drunk. On the contrary. So I’d started watching for the signs. When he arrived for the party, I saw right away that his eyes were bloodshot. His smile was more like a sneer. His attitude was aggressive. The three of them laughed…” She paused, but could think of no other words that would adequately describe them. “They laughed drunkenly and inappropriately.”
“What time of day was this?”
“The party was scheduled for noon. They got there shortly before that.”
“Did you confront Mr. Wesson about these visible signs of intoxication?”
“Yes.”
“Did he offer an explanation?”
“He said they’d come straight from a party of their own, that they’d been celebrating all night.”
“‘They?’ He, Mr. Strong, and Mr. Strong’s wife?”
“Objection. Leading the witness.”
Jackson acknowledged the judge’s ruling in favor of Gleason’s objection, but he’d got his point across to the jury. The party referred to had been among the three of them exclusively.
Out the corner of her eye, Amelia saw Willard Strong mutter something to his lawyer. Gleason sternly shook his head as though admonishing him to keep quiet. It made her shudder to surmise what he might have said, but she seriously doubted that it could have been flattering to her.
Jackson continued. “I think the jury will agree that we’ve established that the defendant, his wife, and your estranged husband showed up drunk to your son’s birthday party. Could you please tell the court what happened next?”
She put herself back into that scene, seeing again Jeremy’s insolent grin. “I asked Jeremy to leave. Other guests had already arrived. They were in the courtyard at the side of the house. I was embarrassed for Jeremy, for myself.”
“How did he respond to your request that he leave?”
“He became belligerent. He said that he had a right to see his son on his birthday, and that I wasn’t going to stop him from doing so.”
Gleason came to his feet. “Your Honor, I object. Why is this testimony relevant to this trial?”
“I’m getting to the relevance,” Jackson calmly replied.
“Objection overruled,” the judge said, but she asked Jackson to move it along.
He nodded and turned back to Amelia. “For the sake of time and defense counsel’s limited patience, can you tell us how this confrontation was resolved?”
“I told Jeremy that he wasn’t fit to be around children. Or anyone for that matter. I ordered him to leave. He refused. So I threatened to call the police. I also threatened to get a restraining order, preventing him from coming near our sons.”
“What was his reaction to the threat?”
“He cursed at me. Called me names. He said that our sons were his flesh and blood and that nothing would or could keep him from being with them. He caused a terrible scene.”
Friends of Hunter’s from preschool, their parents, Hunter himself had heard Jeremy’s profane shouting and had come inside to see what it was about. She would never forget the fear in her son’s eyes as he watched his ranting father. Grant, her younger, was only a year and a half old at the time. He began to cry.
Amelia looked down at her cold, damp hands, which she’d subconsciously clasped tightly in her lap. She forced herself to relax them, reminding herself that her sons would never have to fear Jeremy again.