“No. It’s too dangerous, and you need to stay with your grandmother.”
“Matanzas is an inlet where the sands are always shifting due to the swift currents and the fact that there are no manmade jetties or embankments. Matanzas Inlet also has an evil past. My grandfather saw it. Between the location and those cruel people out there, I don’t want anything to happen to you either.”
CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE
O’Brien drove away from Glenda Lawson’s home and checked his mirrors. Nothing. No sign of car lights. No movement. He called Dave Collins. “How’s Max?”
“She’s lying on the sofa watching the news with me.”
“Can you keep an eye on her a little longer?”
“She’s not a bother. Nick wants to take her up to the Tiki Bar. He says women approach him when Max is sitting in his lap.”
“Is Nick there?”
“He’s in the galley cooking and drinking.”
“I hate to ask you to watch Max and Nick at the same time, but-”
“We’ll stay up talking. Are you going to make it back here for some food?”
“Just ate. I’m driving to Matanzas Inlet.”
“Sean, it’s dark. What the hell are you going to find in the dark?”
“The light, Dave, I hope. Now I have a better idea of what Billy Lawson saw that night when the Germans and Japanese came ashore after he spotted the U-boat.”
“Sean-”
“I’m going to call Dan Grant at Volusia SO and ask him to get a court order to exhume Billy Lawson’s body.”
“Between all the federal and local agencies, there must be a hundred people chasing leads while you’re chasing ghosts.”
“What’s Eric Hunter chasing?”
“Sean, you have him wrong.”
“It’s not a question of right or wrong, it’s grasping what motivates him.”
“What do you mean?”
“If he’s in as deep as you say, and he’s as good as you say he is, where are his allegiances? He may be legit … or he may be ready to score a crime of global consequences.” O’Brien could hear Dave exhale slowly.
“I hope you’re wrong about him,” Dave said.
“I do too.”
O’Brien called Volusia County Sheriff’s Detective Dan Grant. Grant, middle aged, African-American, with twenty years on the force said, “Sean O’Brien, looks like you still have my number programmed. Are you doing okay?”
“Dan, I have a big favor to ask of you.”
“I’m almost afraid to ask … what is it?”
O’Brien brought Grant up to date and said, “Billy Lawson was shot and killed in Volusia County May 19, 1945. He’s buried in Sea View Gardens. His widow, Glenda, has given us permission to exhume the body. There’s no statute of limitations for murder.”
“Exhume it for what? After all this time, what the hell can be left in a box?”
“Have the medical examiner do an autopsy best she can. We’re looking for signs of more than one bullet wound entrance. And we’re looking for bullets.”
“Sounds like a hellava scavenger hunt. Maybe the forensics test of the year.”
“See if you can get a judge to sign it tomorrow morning.”
“How’s this going to help us find who killed Taylor Andrews, the manager of the storage units?”
“I don’t know, but if you can get an emergency court order for this, the information we learn might prevent another murder, the killing of Jason Canfield. I’m trying to put pieces of the past together. It might give me a bearing on finding the rest of the U-235 canisters.”
“I don’t think Jason’s kidnappers hit Nicole Bradley. We picked up a gang-banger for that. Guy’s name is Lionel Tucker. Street name-Popeye. Did a nickel stretch for selling meth. On top of that, he’s a habitual user. When we picked him up, the guy had Nicole’s cell phone and her credit cards on him. Says he found the girl’s purse in a parking lot. He busted his probation, and he’ll sit in the county jail until a trial.”
“You might want to cut him loose, Dan.”
“What?”
“Did he admit to killing her?”
“No, says he never saw her, only saw the purse in a shopping cart.”
“He’s probably telling the truth. I’m sure the kidnappers killed her, the same men holding Jason. Check with Agent Lauren Miles. The suspect you picked up most likely found the purse where he said he did. It was a decoy, and it gave them time to kidnap Jason.”
“Who? Wait a minute, Sean-”
“The people who killed Nicole and the manager are the same. They’re very smart, fast, and ruthless. There must be an enormous price tag for the HEU.”
“What are you going to do?”
“Try to find it before forty-three more hours expire.”
O’Brien was silent, watching fog rise above the ocean as he drove north on A1A.
“Okay, Sean, back to exhuming Billy Lawson’s body. What if we find evidence he died from multiple gunshot wounds? What does it prove?”
“Lies, lots of them. How far back do your homicide investigation records go?”
“I’ve never traced a case to 1945, if that’s what you mean.”
“Maybe you could check. Get the report, if there’s one. See who worked it.”
“They have to be dead.”
“One’s not.”
“Who?”
“His name’s Ford … Brad Ford. See what his involvement was, and see if you can find a current address for him.”
CHAPTER FIFTY-SIX
O’Brien looked at his watch as he pulled off the shoulder of the road near Matanzas Inlet. It was a few minutes past nine. He parked, slid his Glock under his belt, and got out of his Jeep, the engine ticking as it cooled, and waves breaking on the beach to his right. The moon rose above the Atlantic Ocean, the light giving form to a shadowy mist rising from the Matanzas River, which silently rushed through the inlet into the sea. The moving water in the pass delivered the night smells of a changing tide, wet barnacles, mangrove roots, and baitfish. He remembered fishing here twenty years earlier.
O’Brien stepped down the embankment under the Matanzas Pass Bridge, A1A now above him. A car passed. He stopped and listened, the sound of the car growing faint in the distance. He walked under the bridge to the water’s edge, following the shoreline a few feet until he had cleared the bridge above him.
A nighthawk called out as O’Brien knelt down and lowered his hand into the wide stream, the current pulling toward the sea, a receding tide. Vapor rose from the brackish river like a conga line of ghosts riding a silent night train-the river, flowing around the dark mangrove islands. O’Brien thought about what Glenda and Abby had said- history of the inlet, the bloodshed and the fact that where he stood was a back door into the New World. It was a
