seven
Gregory Tate
GREG WATCHED ANN MAKE a smooth landing coming in west to east, reversing the airstrip’s normal direction to suit the lighting rather than the wind. He strode toward the open hangar while the taxiing aircraft circled the runway, swung around into the hangar, and powered down its engines. Knowing close to the minute how long it would take Ann to work through the landing checklist before the aircraft’s stairs came down, he didn’t hurry.
What had once been a spacious Coast Guard air station before they moved flight operations to Florida had turned into a private airstrip for island residents. Greg removed his sunglasses as he entered the hangar, walked past his waiting SUV, and picked up wheel chocks from a nearby equipment rack. Ducking under the wing, he set the physical brakes, then moved around to the aircraft door. The small airfield was deserted but for the security officer and the fuel guy who would prep Ann’s return flight. The quiet was welcome, suitable for the guest he was here to meet.
Ann’s call this morning had interrupted his plan to spend the day deep-sea fishing in the Gulf. It wasn’t the first time a favor for Ann had interrupted a vacation day and probably wouldn’t be the last. So far in his life, Greg had never regretted agreeing to one of her requests, and this one sounded uniquely interesting. Six years wrongly convicted . . . that made for a long journey. He’d be able to help, he was confident of that.
The setting sun cast long shadows across the hangar floor. Berry Island off the Louisiana coast was basically a chunk of rock sticking up out of the Gulf of Mexico. One hugged by enough pulverized rock and shells, it seemed to float within a ring of wide, sandy beaches. There were a few lazy pelicans and other migrating birds, some turtles, but otherwise the island’s chief claim to fame was the sun and sand. The wind here was a constant. He could feel the dryness in his eyes after spending the day on his deck, reading over the case materials Ann had emailed him.
The aircraft stairs gave a brief hydraulic hum as they engaged and lowered. Ann stepped out. Her smile bloomed. “You’re looking particularly young and tanned today, Greg.”
He laughed. “Tanned, I’ll give you. Good to see you, friend.” He hugged her in welcome and gave her an encompassing look. “Marriage agrees with you,” he decided, for she looked even more relaxed than two years ago when she’d been here with Paul, still practically on their honeymoon.
“I’m loving every minute of it.”
He glanced behind her to the doorway.
“Give her a minute. The landing woke her up. Hardly surprising, given the cabin is effectively soundproof and the last eight hours have been rolling stress.”
“She’s holding up?”
“Seems to be. The biggest surprise so far is the fact she still thinks Andrew’s death was a robbery gone wrong.”
“I got your text.” They were going to have to break the news it had been something else, or rather he was. He would be walking Janelle through that truth sometime in the next few weeks. He would outline a strategy for that conversation with Ann after she took him through the full case file later tonight. “How about you finish your flight log, check the radar and weather for tomorrow, call Paul to let him know you’ve arrived, and give me some time with her? Janelle and I may as well get acquainted right here.”
“Sure. I appreciate your taking on an emergency placement.”
“What are friends for, if not situations like this?”
There was movement on the stairs behind her, and his arriving guest stepped out of the plane. Slender, athletic, hazel eyes, neatly trimmed bangs with the rest of her hair braided. The travel clothes she’d chosen for herself suited her. Nothing in his first impression gave him particular pause. He smiled and said, “Introduce me, Ann.”
“Janelle Roberts, I’d like you to meet Greg Tate.”
She accepted the hand he offered and shook it. “It’s nice to meet you, Greg.”
He saw polite wariness covering lingering exhaustion. The woman needed her life to stop moving, and that made his first decision on how to proceed with her a simple one. “Let’s go for a walk, Janelle. Ann’s got some flight details to finish up.”
She glanced outside the hangar and nodded. Greg held out a spare ball cap as they left the building. “Not as effective as sunglasses, but you’ll find yourself wearing a hat most of the time you’re here.”
“It’s comfortably warm for this late in the day.”
“Mid-seventies,” he agreed. “Can you handle heights?” He pointed to the set of stairs that serviced the water tower. “The best view of the island is that first landing.”
She changed course toward it.
The stairs took them up a story and a half. They couldn’t see over the hangar roofs to the south, but the rest of the island was on display. She leaned against the metal railing, her gaze sweeping over the view. He leaned against the opposite railing, fished a couple of butterscotch candies out of his pocket, and unwrapped one. She glanced over at the sound of the cellophane, and he held out the other piece. She accepted it.
“That’s my place,” he indicated with a nod, spotting it for her to the west. “The oval track where we race go-carts, the horse barns beyond. The main house is just beyond that ridge with a view down toward the beach.”
“Ann didn’t mention horses.”
“A recent addition.” He tucked the cellophane wrapper into his pocket. After six years in prison, he doubted she’d spend more than a handful of hours inside over the next month, so he mentioned next, “You’ll find there are a number of basic things to do on the island: bike riding, hiking, spending time on the beach or in the water, and boating. For my guests, add the go-carts and the horses to that list. If you don’t know how to ride, I’ll teach you. If you don’t know how to spin out on a go-cart, I’ll teach you this too—so it will be a fair race.”
She looked at him and nearly laughed. “That sounds ideal.”
He liked how her smile changed her face. Not relaxed yet, that smile, but on the way to being natural. “There will be full days spent just working through the list.” He wanted to get her up on a horse soon, let her enjoy the unique freedom that riding offered.
He weighed how to word a request, then simply said, “Give me three hours.”
Janelle glanced over, surprised.
“Ann and Paul have already hit you with a lot of changes today. But there’s another waterfall of information I need to give you—about this place, about me—and then your world will truly, finally, stop moving. Give me three hours.”
Janelle hesitated before she answered, “The nap during the flight helped. I can listen. But I don’t think I have the capacity to be making any more major decisions today.”
“Good,” Greg agreed, “that works. Because I’ve pretty much been making all the decisions for you. Tomorrow, next week, you can tell me which ones I’ve made that you prefer be changed to something else.”
She blinked and gave him a more alive smile. “That I can live with,” Janelle said. “Okay. Three hours. I’ll hold you to that.”
“I’d like to give you a high-level sense of where you’ve landed, and then who you have landed with. The stress you’re experiencing will stop forming once you have enough answers that your world returns to being something stable.” He sounded more like a doctor than he would prefer with that remark, but she simply nodded and let it pass without comment. He nodded to the view. “So, let’s start with this place.”
He’d introduced the island to a lot of guests, and did so now for Janelle. “One hundred eighty-seven people live on this island year-round. On a typical day, there can be an additional five to six hundred guests, out enjoying the sun and the sand. To say we care about them is an understatement—they’re most of our economy.”
“I can imagine.”
He smiled. “The faces change, but the routine is constant. People come, enjoy themselves, then head home. We islanders quickly reset for the next incoming wave of people, trying to give them all a good experience. The island caters mostly to day tourists, with some guests staying for a handful of days at our two local hotels. We’re not really the two-week vacation kind of place, though there are a number of weekly and monthly rentals available.
“The east side of the island facing Florida is mostly condos with walks out onto the beach. The south side facing the Gulf would be considered the expensive side and has about twenty homes total. The west side gives the best views, but building there is tough, like drilling into solid granite, so my neighbors are rather sparse and clustered into pockets.”
“You’ve lived here for a while?” she asked.
“Thirteen years now. My father settled here ten years before that.” He looked to the north. “There’s one town on the island, and you can see about eighty percent of it from here. Nice shops—clothing and gifts, a good florist, a few cafés. I own three of the restaurants, some of the food trucks that work the public beaches, and that ferry you see now crossing from the mainland back to the island. Consider me an accidental businessman. Islanders want to retire and move to the mainland, they ask me if I want to purchase their businesses, and I’ve been in a position to say yes. I can run a balance sheet, and I enjoy good food, but the rest I leave to excellent managers. The businesses are not my main career. The docks to the east of that ferry landing are always a busy place—a lot of fishing charters go out daily, and it’s a popular mooring for sailboats.”
“You sail?”
“Some. I prefer to fly. Hangar four there is mine.” He pointed. She glanced at him at the comment, but he chose not to expand on it yet. “I’ll introduce you to friends who love to sail, though, and also the best charter boat captains. If you want to spend most of your days on the water, it’s easily arranged.”
“Thanks. I haven’t been on a boat in a very long time. It sounds freeing.”
“And I think you’d enjoy the adventure of it.”
The sunset was turning the beaches golden, showing off the island at its finest. “The public beaches on the north side of the island are the prime tourist destinations,” he mentioned, “as you can walk out in the water for thirty feet with your feet still touching the sandy bottom. The shallow water warms up in the sunlight and stays comfortable year-round. The rest of the island is mostly private beaches with varying levels of drop-offs and, in some cases, persistent riptides.
“I wanted you to see the island as a whole, so when I say you can go exploring and not get lost, I mean it. The landmass is about twenty square miles. The rocky cliffs deserve your respect, and the hiking trails will challenge your endurance. You might get yourself a twisted ankle, or take a bad fall, but you really can’t get lost.”
“It does help to see it all from up here.”
“Got a phone on you?”
She nodded.
“Dig it out and put my number in it. We get decent cell reception across the island.”
He gave her his cell number, then added hers to his phone’s contacts.
“The road circling the island is filled with hills and turns and offers some spectacular scenery. There are all sorts of different bikes to rent—beach cruisers, road bikes, or mountain bikes depending on your destination. But golf carts are the favored choice here, for island residents and tourists alike. In fact, I inherited from my father the golf-cart business as well as the ferry. And that ends my introduction to the island. Have any questions about the place I can answer for you, Janelle?”
“Could you show me one of the beaches while it’s still light enough to walk on the sand?”
He checked the position of the sun, calculated they had about thirty minutes of light left. “Sure. I can do that easily enough. You’ll enjoy the sunset.”
Greg parked in front of his place. His house was well lit, as was the companion place just beyond it. He quickly stepped out and opened Janelle’s door before she could do so, determined to begin changing her perception of herself with the return of small courtesies. Ann exited the vehicle on the other side, caught his gaze, and silently mouthed Tell her. There were two ways to play this evening, and Ann was indicating the harder path. Interesting. He would have thought she’d prefer to leave those details until tomorrow. He gave her a slight nod, willing to trust her judgment.
As Janelle stepped out of the SUV, he casually said, “Ann, dinner is arriving in about ten minutes. Catch that for us, would you? It’s already on my tab. The house is unlocked. I’m going to show Janelle the path to the beach while there’s still light. Then I’ll get the boxes and luggage unloaded.”
“Sure.” Ann headed up the walk.
Greg pulled two flashlights from under the front seat and handed one to Janelle. “Just a precaution. It’s not far.” He pointed to where the sunset was now saturating the horizon and led the way. The beach was a three-minute walk along a path that gradually dropped toward the sea, then took one last steeper decline to the sand.
He wasn’t surprised at Janelle’s silence as they walked. She would have too many things going on in her mind right now to have the bandwidth to offer casual conversation. Greg filled in the silence simply to get her accustomed to the sound of his voice. “You’ll want to get in the habit of picking up a flashlight if you head out in the evening. Nights on the island are like a thick, tangible darkness. What you get in compensation is a sky filled with bright stars.”
“All right, I’ll remember.”
Twilight was descending even as the clouds overhead shifted toward a brilliant hot pink. Janelle momentarily stopped to gaze up at the color change. “Wow.”
Greg chuckled. “The sunsets are one reason why you want to live here.”
He clicked on his flashlight, and Janelle followed suit. The sound of water lapping ashore signaled that they were approaching the final descent to the beach. “You’ll want to use the handrail I put in for this steep turn ahead.” He led the way down, took the bend, and suddenly they were on the beach.
Janelle stopped, startled. “This is a really nice stretch of sand.”
“Right at eighty yards,” he replied with a smile, “and very private.”
She immediately removed her shoes and began walking barefoot across the sand toward the water, letting the next wave lap across her toes. “It’s warm!”
“Probably a few degrees warmer than the air,” he agreed. “The Gulf waters hold on to the sun’s heat.” He could see her joy as she strolled along in ankle-deep water. “Can you swim? Be honest.”
“Like a duck,” she reassured. “The first item on my shopping list is a swimsuit. I love your beach. I could easily spend a month just listening to the water come ashore.”
“Then I’m delighted to share it with you. You’ll see turtles along here, crabs, driftwood after storms, the occasional starfish. I swim for a couple of hours most days. It’s the clearest water you’ll ever experience, like a highly filtered pristine sea.”
“Thanks for bringing me down here tonight.” She spotted a nearly intact shell with her flashlight and dug it out of the wet sand.
“Glad to oblige.” Given her delight with the warm water, it was time for safety information. He pointed his flashlight out across the waves. “That big circle dial with the arrow is mounted on a floating buoy about fifty yards out. It indicates the strongest riptides measured in the prior hour. If the arrow is in the red zone, stay out of the water. If in the yellow zone, stay nearer to shore and on this side of the buoy. Green, you’re safe to swim out a distance beyond it. When you’re swimming, keep a general sense of that dial. The arrow starts to rise, you’ll want to move in.”
“That’s useful, thanks.”
“These dials are on all the island beaches. They’ve protected people and saved a lot of lives since they were installed about twenty-five years ago,” he added. “Swimming is sunup to sundown, and lifeguards enforce it on the public beaches. I do the same here. We don’t have much in the way of sharks in these waters—they favor being west of here—nor many stingrays or jellyfish. Still, you’ll be wise to treat it as the sea it is and stay aware of your surroundings. You don’t treat the Gulf casually—in the dark, it’s wet feet only.”
“Agreed,” she said with a nod.
He gestured with the flashlight to the north. “I’ve got a fire ring and benches down at that end, and a sand-colored storage bin with lounge chairs, beach umbrellas—the basics to get comfortable if you want something more than a tree trunk to sit on. You’ll need to bring with you towels and water bottles, sunscreen, the book you want to enjoy. There are selections of backpacks and mini-coolers in my utility room, cold packs in the freezer, to make it easier to haul stuff around.”
He walked farther along the sand and took a seat on his favorite fallen tree trunk. She didn’t take a seat beside him, but he hadn’t expected her to. She continued to stroll the meeting place of sand and water. The sea was calm tonight, mild in its mood.
“It’s helpful, seeing this beach,” she called over to him. “This could have waited until tomorrow, but it’s going to be nice having a different beach in my head tonight than the one that has haunted me for the last six years.”
“Copy that,” he replied calmly, and simply watched her enjoy walking the beach. She returned his direction after about ten minutes.
He aimed his flashlight toward the path up to the house. “See the handrail for going back up that incline?”
“Yes.”
“Then I’m going to tell you something and I’d like you to just listen for a few minutes. If you decide you don’t want to continue the conversation, there’s the exit. I won’t follow after you. I figure you can find the way without a problem from here.” She stopped about eight feet away, but her gaze was on him.
“You asked during the drive from the airfield if I often have guests. Like I said, I do. I’m a doctor, Janelle. The PhD kind. I specialize in helping people deal with injuries to their minds. You’re here to safely get acclimated back to freedom, to debrief what happened, and for me to help you fix what got damaged.”
“I knew there was a catch—I just didn’t see what it was. So you’re a shrink.”
He smiled at her shrewd tone. “Ann doesn’t do anything without a few layers of reasons to it. I’m not a man in a hurry. We can talk tomorrow, or we can talk a few weeks from now. You’ve got stuff in your mind that’s going to give you problems in the future if it’s not sorted out. I can help. I’ve seen some of what you’re dealing with firsthand.”
He’d already noticed her glance at the scar on his arm. “I come with a pretty good story of my own. I’m a former military pilot and, for what it’s worth, a Medal of Honor recipient. I flew close-air-support gunships, got shot down in Afghanistan, spent nine months in a prison on the Pakistan side of the border before people realized I was still alive. There isn’t much you can tell me about incarceration that I can’t personally relate to. The sounds, the uncertainty, the chaos of ending up there. It was burning aviation fuel, by the way, that caused most of the scars. It’s why you’ll normally see me swimming with a shirt on.”
“I’m sorry to hear that, and I apologize for my ‘shrink’ comment.”
He nodded, smiled briefly. “Appreciated—both the apology and the sympathy. In my mind it all happened eons ago, about fourteen years in actual fact. But I do speak from personal knowledge when I say the details can fade with time. My job is to apply what I know to make sure you walk away from what happened in good shape.”
She sat down on the other end of the log. “Why make a big deal of this? Why someone with your level of expertise? I was convicted of something I didn’t do; I’m now pardoned and free of it. There’s going to be a transition period to get back some kind of a life—I get that. But I’m not particularly damaged. I’m in good health, and once I establish a job somewhere, it’s not going to take long to reacquire a decent life.”
He couldn’t help but smile. “Janelle, that confidence is good, but the reality is you don’t know yet what shape you’re in, or where your head is at, or what you most need. In these first days, you’re going to decompress. Your emotions are going to occasionally feel like they’re shaking you apart, and other times you’ll wonder if you’ll ever feel anything again. It’s your shattered nerves shaking off six years of stress. You’re going to get the reaction from your body in whatever form it decides to take. Don’t fight it, just let it pass. It’s part of the process.”
“That bad?”
“It will pass,” he repeated. “Freedom is a process. I understand that better than anyone you’ll likely ever meet. Think of me as your safety valve, your road map. I’ll get you there, so that when you do leave this island, you’ll truly be in good shape.” The first stars were appearing. He stood to change the subject. “Why don’t we head back?”
Janelle slipped on her socks and tennis shoes and walked with him. He wasn’t surprised when she retreated again to silence. He eventually said, “I read some of the trial transcript this afternoon. It’s your belief that Andrew was killed in a robbery that night. You still hold to that?” He turned her way.
“Yes.” She gave him a quick glance.
He nodded thoughtfully. “The pardon, the reason for it, will add some details to what you know, and the truth you’re going to hear will be hard to accept. The timing of those conversations is part of what we’ll be sorting out, Janelle. Ann and Paul are working the case as investigators. I’m the neutral party who will help you move through the discovery process safely so it doesn’t overwhelm you.
“We all want you to recover smoothly. But you’re going to have to trust people you’ve just met, have confidence in their judgment—that is all part of the process too. So I would ask one thing from you now. Don’t call old friends or communicate with people from your life before or talk to the press—not until you’ve had some time to acclimate and have heard what you need to know about the research that resulted in your pardon.”
“Ann was stressing that point too but in a more subtle way. Why?”
“How various individuals react to news of your pardon can tell investigators more information than they had before, and right now they have some people they are watching very closely. If you speak to people too soon, the conditions change. It’s simply easier if you aren’t one of the variables in these first few days.”
Janelle nodded. “I can agree to that, although the reason has me puzzled.”
“Thanks.” Greg left the topic there. Ann’s chief focus had shifted to figuring out how to hold Tanya accountable for Andrew’s murder. But Janelle wasn’t yet aware how this case was going to turn. Walking through the truth with her would be a challenge he would handle with great care when the time was right.