I PARKED THE CHARGER outside the home of my boss, Miles Dooger. On the front lawn, two reindeer made of string lights stood sentinel.
After a few minutes of knocking, Miles met me at the front door. He was dressed in sweats and a Harley T-shirt that barely covered his gut.
“I need to bounce something off you,” I said.
“It’s two a.m., P.T.”
I shrugged, and Miles waved me inside.
We walked into a wood-paneled study with dark curtains covering the windows. Since he didn’t ask about the mess at the compound, I was guessing he hadn’t been briefed yet.
“Did I wake Jules up?” I asked.
“She’s at her sister’s with the kids.”
Miles offered me a drink, but I passed. He poured two inches of the Macallan 25 single malt in a lowball glass and sat down in a leather recliner.
I was hyper. My mind running faster than my mouth.
“This case has been tough for me,” I said. “And the poisoning and accident—it caused me to think about some things I’ve been avoiding.”
Miles rested the Macallan on the curve of his stomach and took off his glasses. “That’s good, right?”
“I guess.” I nodded.
I walked over to a bookcase full of sports mementos. There was a signed picture from the ’80s of Hawks’ forward Dominique Wilkins. A baseball set in a clear cube featuring autographs of every player from the ’95 Braves.
“Two hours ago, I was damn near convinced that Abe was a dirty cop.” I touched the corner of my mouth. “This isn’t from the accident. Abe’s got a solid right hook.”
Miles smiled at me. From the other room, a cell phone rang.
“There was a moment, Miles,” I said. “Abe and I went at it. And I asked if he’d broken our rule and let anyone else inside the conference room where we’d put up our timeline on Kendrick’s death.”
“And what’d he say?” Miles asked.
“He said he’d just let a few people in the room. Me and Remy. And Stash.”
“Stash?” Miles cocked his head.
“I know,” I said. “I didn’t make much of the word. It’s been hard to make much of anything lately. I’ve been distracted. This whole mess started on the anniversary of Lena’s and Jonas’s deaths.”
“I’m sorry you had to lead this,” Miles said. “But we needed you.”
“Miles, those guys in the cave at Cantabon, where Loyo traced that call? They knew we were coming.”
“What do you mean ‘they knew’?”
“The girl heard them talking,” I said. “So I started to question myself. I’ve been thinking all week how unreliable I’ve been. From the beginning of this thing—showing up to help that stripper.”
“You’ve been reckless all year, P.T. You’re lucky you got friends on the force. Guys who watch out for you.”
“Like you?” I asked.
“Like a lot of us.”
“But then when it happened to my father-in-law,” I said. “His house. No forceful B and E. Just someone in there. The door wide open. It got me thinking about who’s got keys to both houses.”
“What’d you come up with?”
“Me,” I said. “I keep this spare set of keys in my locker at the station. It’s Lena’s key ring. Got recovered from her car in the river. They were in her purse, Miles. You remember? The arguments I got into with you about the keys?”
Miles’s mouth turned up a bit. He hated when I brought up the investigation into my wife’s death because he knew I was unsatisfied with the results. Marvin was never held at fault, and no car that hit Marvin was ever found. A crime with no criminal.
And he’d stepped in to personally lead that case.
“See, Miles, I keep those keys in my locker because they remind me of my unique point of view. People think I’m a little nuts. Sarcastic. A drunk.”
“You can be all those things,” Miles said.
“But there’s your core, you know? You always know your own core.”
“Are you sarcastic at your core?” Miles asked. “Or a drunk?”
“I’m a detective,” I said. “There’s a lot of cops out there in the world. Good guys. Mean well. Smart.” I stared Miles down. “But only a couple good detectives.”
The house phone rang in the other room.
“I kept thinking that my father-in-law was giving Lena a push start with his car at the roadside,” I said. “But her keys were found in her purse. When you got an old stick shift with a shit battery and you get a push, you need the keys in the ignition. You gotta be ready to pop the clutch.”
“So now you believe in Marvin?” Miles asked. “After all this time?”
“It doesn’t matter what I believe in,” I said. “See, I keep those keys in my locker as a symbol. They remind me to think differently than others.”
“Okay.”
“But last week—the keys weren’t there anymore. So I knew a cop from our squad had taken them.”
“Taken your keys?” he asked.
“And I said this to Remy last night, and you know what she said?”
Miles ran his hands through his salt-and-pepper hair. “No, what’d the rook say that was so brilliant?”
“She told me there’s a camera in that room. Way up in the top corner. Real small one. Because cops put their guns in their lockers. We gotta have records.
“And I’m thinking about this,” I said. “And then about what Abe said.”
I pointed at Miles’s mustache. “‘Stash,’ he said. I heard the word a few weeks ago from a guy in patrol. I was confused. I said, ‘What’s “stash,”’—and he said to me, ‘That’s what the rookies call the boss. “Stash.”’”
Miles’s face turned pale, his fingers instinctively touching his wide gray mustache.
“So ‘Stash’ was the other person Abe allowed in that room with the timeline. That’s you.”
“You’re talking crazy, P.T.,” he said. “You need to think about what you’re saying.”
“Miles,” I said. “You were the only one who knew we were headed to see Cobb and Meadows at that cave. You warned someone. And then you sent two cops into the hands of murderers.”
Miles stood up.
“So first it was Abe who’s dirty and now it’s me?” he said. “We’re all dirty, and you’re the big hero?”
My stomach turned. I felt like I was gonna vomit.
“I’m no hero,” I said.
“You’re out of control, P.T. And you know why?”
“Why?”
“You’re racked with guilt about your wife,” Miles said. “See, I know what other people don’t,” he said. “What your father-in-law doesn’t know.”
A fire began to burn inside my chest.
“I know Lena called you,” Miles said, “the night she died.”
The blaze spread, the flames licking at my heart.
“I know she asked you to come get her,” Miles said. “It’s easier to blame your father-in-law. Just like you’re blaming this on me.”
“No,” I whispered. But Miles had led the investigation into my wife’s death. He knew things.
“I saw the call on her cell records. Three minutes long, so it wasn’t a voicemail. And it was made from the roadside to you—at the precinct.”
For a moment I was back there, in my office, working last December. Lena had called and asked if I could pick her and Jonas up. Her car was dead at the roadside.
“But you were too busy to get her, weren’t you, P.T.?” Miles said. “Worse, you’re the one who told her to call her dad, knowing he drank every afternoon. And why? Because of some little robbery that only you could solve? Only the very special P. T. Marsh could handle?”
In an instant, the fire was out.
“The Golden Oaks,” I mumbled.
My body was frozen. Remembering the case I’d been working on.
Thirty-three dollars and a Cherry Coke had been stolen from the Golden Oaks Mini Mart.
“That was more important than Lena’s and Jonas’s lives,” Miles said. “And the baby’s.”
I raised my eyes off the floor. Stared at the bottle of Macallan. Lena had been pregnant at the time, and only a couple people knew. I could taste the whisky hitting the back of my throat.
“So everyone’s corrupt except you?” Miles asked. “Everyone’s made mistakes, but not you?”
My mind wanted to give in. To drink. To hide. How could I face that I’d let my wife and son die?
But some voice inside told me it was okay. Told me I was already forgiven.
Maybe it was Lena’s voice. Or maybe it was someone else. Someone who I never met face-to-face. Like Kendrick Webster.
“You’re right, Miles,” I said. “I am full of guilt. But it didn’t stop me from focusing long enough to kill Cobb and Meadows.”
In the kitchen, the house phone rang again. “I don’t have time for this,” Miles said.
“See, we got the state police involved since the murder happened in a state park. So you don’t have jurisdiction, Miles. You can’t control this.”
Miles’s eyes went wide.
“That phone ringing in the other room,” I said. “It’s the sound of the end for you. Oxley is dead. The Order of the South, uncovered. The governor, his days numbered.”
Miles turned toward the kitchen.
“I’ve got proof,” I said.
“What—you looked at that camera footage in the locker area?”
I nodded, even though I hadn’t done this yet.
“I’ll tell everyone I grabbed those keys for you,” Miles said. “That you were drunk and couldn’t get into your own house.”
So it was him. Inside, my heart fell. Hearing it from his own mouth.
“I’ve got the girl hidden away, Miles. The state police watching her. She heard everything they said. The calls they got.”
“What do you want?” Miles said. “You want my job? Is that it?”
“I want to know why,” I yelled. “Was it for money?”
Miles laughed. “It wasn’t money. It was this shit—your arrogance checking into every case to make sure the rest of us got it right.”
“I’m your best detective.”
“You were my best detective. You’ve been drunk six days a week since your wife died.”
“No,” I said.
“You broke into a stripper’s house and beat the shit out of her boyfriend,” he said.
“Like this thing with your wife’s keys. You constantly rechecking out her murder book. You think I’m not told by Records every time you do that?”
I stared at him, confused. “But you’re my friend.”
“We’re peacekeepers together, P.T. Nothing more. And if we’re lucky, we do that for two decades. After that, we gotta think about what comes next.”
I shook my head, useless with the shock of it.
“How do you think small towns get funded for highways?” Miles asked. “This place gets an off-ramp. That place gets a crime lab.”
“So you did this to run some friggin’ crime lab?”
Miles cocked his head at me. “Jesus, P.T., you still don’t get how half the crimes get solved around here? It’s not you or your rookie partner and how damn good y’all are. It’s relationships.”
I smarted at this.
“You think it’s these lessons you give Remy on what to do and not do?” he said. “You’re so damn righteous.”
Miles exhaled loudly. “So when I needed someone to take a knee for the rest of us,” he said. “When people of importance in Georgia came to me. It didn’t even take me a second to think of your name.”
I was confused. Was it really as simple as this? I’d been sold out this easily?
“Well, you don’t get to play God.” I stood up. “And you’re finished.”
Miles started laughing. “From the locker thing?”
“I got information on the Order,” I said. “I got the girl. The state will bring in your buddy Loyo and trace the call you made to sell me out. And when I hand everything over, they’re gonna put your ass in prison.”
“Fuck you,” he said to me.
“You ready to have your wife and daughters visit you in jail?” I asked. “Or maybe they won’t even come—because they’ll be too ashamed. Then you’ll have no one, just like me.”
“No,” he said.
“It’s time to call the press and retire, Miles.”
“No.” He raised his voice. “You report to me. To me. Not the other way around.”
“You better tell your buddy Governor Monroe. It’s you or him that goes,” I said. “And I’ll bet he saves himself.”
I headed for the door. “There are fifty feet between your office and a cell,” I yelled. “If you show up at the station house, I’m gonna cuff your ass and walk you there.”
“Go to hell, Marsh.”
“Hell?” I said. “I’ve been there a year. I’m its best citizen.”
I wanted to hurt him. To see him rot in jail. But the look on his face was easy to read. He knew he was finished.
“Forty-eight hours,” I warned. “Have a nice retirement.”
I slammed his door and got in the Charger. Started speeding back toward the bridge faster than I should’ve. A minute later I threw on the brakes and pulled to the side of the road.
Miles Dooger and two thugs weren’t enough. They weren’t nearly enough to correct the evil that had been visited on this community and these families for a hundred and fifty years.
I grabbed the evidence bag and raided it for a business card. A card that Miles had given me at the cigar room before the press conference a week ago. It had Governor Monroe’s private number on it.
Grabbing the burner phone, I called up Neary from the state police.
“It’s Marsh,” I said when he answered. “I need your help.”
“Of course,” Neary said. “I told you, P.T. If there’s something going on, don’t do this yourself.”
“Don’t worry,” I said. “Right now, you’re the only guy I can trust.”
“What do you need?”
“A reverse trace on a number,” I said.
I supplied him the governor’s private cell number, and he told me he’d text me the address.
“What about backup?” he asked. “I can send two cars.”
“Have them park a distance away. Keep an eye out for me.”
A minute later he texted me an address. A farmhouse thirty minutes outside of Marietta.
I got in and drove in silence, thinking about the two dozen dinners I’d had at Miles Dooger’s home. Of Miles at the hospital when Lena had the baby. Of Jonas playing in the backyard with Miles’s kids. It was flat impossible to believe he’d ordered my murder.
My GPS dinged, and I took the Tall Oaks exit. Drove until the road became fine gravel.
I hit the high beams and spied a line of white fence that ran beside a curving drive. It was a horse-breeding farm and a big one at that. The stables were larger than the main house, and the main house was huge.
The phone told me to make my last turn, and I slowed as I passed a pair of blue state trooper cars. Neary’s guys gave me a nod, but didn’t follow, remaining just outside of private property.
The drive dead-ended at a locked gate. There was a small security booth, but no one was inside. I punched the number from the back of the business card into my phone.
“Hello?” a man’s voice answered, half asleep.
“This is Detective P. T. Marsh,” I said.
“What time is it?” a woman’s voice said in the background. Sleepy. Young.
I looked at the phone to make sure I’d hit the right number. The man hadn’t hung up yet.
“I know about the Order of the South,” I said.
There was just silence.
“I’ve got a ledger,” I said. “Monroe is one of the founding names.”
“Is it a wrong number?” the woman asked.
“I know about the snowstorm in ’68,” I said. “Two kids were killed that year. Now we’re gonna talk about this, Governor, or I’m gonna drive to Atlanta. Talk to someone at CNN about how your family got its political start.”
“I’ll come out,” he said. “Just wait a sec.”
I heard a noise, and the mechanical wooden gate slid open.
I drove down the drive and parked in between the main house and a giant manicured green field—about ten feet from the porch.
As I got out of the car, the two troopers put on their high beams, pointing toward the farm.
A door rattled open and out came Monroe. He was dressed in pajama pants and a black windbreaker. His normally perfect salt-and-pepper hair was mussed up.
I walked toward the wooden steps that led down from the house. “You own this place?” I said.
“It belongs to a friend,” he said. “Produced a Triple Crown winner. I come here to think.”
I thought of the woman who I’d heard in the background. A twenty-something voice. Not the governor’s wife, in her fifties, who I’d seen on TV a dozen times.
“Is that what you call it these days?” I looked to the house. “Thinking?”
Monroe stared at me from the top step of the porch. “I don’t know you, Marsh.”
“I’m the guy who’s got your family name all over a ledger in my car,” I said.
I stood about eight feet from him and pulled up the flannel shirt I wore over jeans. I turned in a circle—showing him I wasn’t wearing a wire.
“I’m also the guy who knows that you and your type have been killing kids for a hundred and fifty years—”
“You can’t tie me to something I never did.”
“I don’t need to.” I shrugged. “That’s the media’s job. For all I care, they can crowdsource this shit. Ask the public.”
Monroe ran his hand along the wood of the railing. “What do you want?” he asked.
“The Order. When’s the first time you knew about it?”
“It’s a ghost story, Detective.”
I turned and walked the ten feet back to my car. Got in the Charger. “Good luck in the next news cycle.”
“Marsh,” he said. “Stop, all right.”
But he hesitated still, and I fired up the ignition.
“I just left Miles Dooger’s house,” I said. “So let me tell you what I told him. We saved the girl. We intercepted the money paid to kill her. She ID’d the guys and heard Dooger send them her way—under your order. So we’re gonna wrap this up in a bow so neat that you’re not gonna remember what the governor’s mansion even smells like. See those guys?” I pointed at the two patrol cars. “I say the word, and they arrest you.”
The governor stared through the mist at the two cars and then back at me. A life spent calculating the odds of ever loyalty and betrayal.
“Okay,” he said. “Let’s talk.”
I got out of the Charger and walked toward him.
“There was a guy named Mickey Havordine,” he said. “He was my dad’s first campaign manager.”
“Okay,” I said.
“Mickey was like an uncle. Took care of me when my dad was traveling. One night he was drunk and told me this story about how they got shut out of their first debate. That was the first night I heard the words ‘the Order.’”
“This was the night of the snowstorm?” I asked. The article I’d found with Candy in the microfiche.
“Exactly.” The governor nodded. “And the guys my dad was running against were no slouches, Marsh. One was a councilman from Atlanta. The other, the sitting governor.”
“But they both died,” I said. “That’s how your dad got his start.”
“Yeah,” Monroe said. “See, Dad wasn’t invited to the debate. He was the number three candidate and was shut out. So Mickey rented this soda fountain in Decano Falls. His goal was to get a crowd there and film it. Drop off a reel at the news stations. Make them look bigger than the debate.”
“But the storm happened?”
“Not any storm,” Monroe said. “By eight p.m., the snow was knee-high, and the only people in the soda shop were Mickey and my dad, getting drunk. The high three days earlier had been sixty-six degrees. But at that point it was thirteen out and getting colder. The storm had driven everyone into their homes, where they were watching the debate on TV.”
“So Mickey blew it?” I said.
“Half their budget in one night,” Monroe said. “But my dad told him not to worry.”
This was 1968, I thought. Fifty years ago.
“And then a minute later—there’s no debate,” the governor said. “The roof collapsed under the weight of the blizzard. Everyone inside died.”
Thirteen degrees and a blizzard in Georgia. It was stranger than a four-horse win at a track.
“Dad and Mickey were an hour away,” Monroe said. “Dad told Mickey to sober up and write him a speech. But Mickey was frozen. ‘What did you do?’ he asked Dad.”
“And what did your dad say?”
“Nothing,” Monroe said. “It was an accident, Marsh. It was Mother Nature. And they drove over there, and my dad made his best speech ever. About how two public servants were lost. And parents and reporters. And how he wouldn’t stop until he found out how and why.”
“What does ‘Rise’ mean?” I said.
Monroe shrugged. “My dad had a ‘Rise’ tattoo. My grandad. When I asked Dad about it as a kid, he told me it was a campaign slogan.”
I grabbed my phone, showing him pictures of Donnie Meadows and Elias Cobb. “Do you know these men?”
Monroe looked at the shots, studying their features. “Nope.”
“There are big reversals of fortune that happen, Governor. A lotto win in Harmony nine days ago. A big horse race in ’93 for the guy whose son got sent away. I’ve looked into them. And you know what I find?”
“You find that they’re random. Coincidence. Acts of God.”
That was exactly what I’d found. And suddenly I was pissed. Fuming. That Monroe knew about all this, out ahead of me.
“So you met with Miles Dooger and you knew,” I said. “You knew what year it was. You saw Kendrick kidnapped and—”
“I wondered.”
“And when Dooger told you it was a lynching—”
“Then I was guessing,” he said. “But I don’t talk to these people, Marsh. Whoever they are, it’s in the shadows.”
“You and me.” I put a finger to Monroe’s chest. “We get paid to make sure life is good in Georgia. That this shit doesn’t happen.”
“And I try, Marsh,” he said. “But sometimes you gotta live with the legacy of your history—whether you like it or not. That was Mickey’s point in telling me the story.”
“You’re going down,” I said.
“Marsh.” He followed me down the porch. “I never took a dollar from these people. I lost elections. I won elections. And if they’re doing some voodoo magic to help me, I don’t know about it.”
He grabbed at my shoulder, and I spun around, knocking him down onto the grass by the steps.
“What do you want from me?” he hollered.
“Someone paid these men to kill kids. To them, it wasn’t magic. It was a contract murder, and you’re tied to it.”
“We’ll figure this out, you and me.”
“No.”
“I’ll make some calls.”
“You better make ’em now,” I said. “I want five names by the time the sun comes up.”
“What?” he yelled. Incredulous.
I walked over to my car and grabbed the ledger.
The governor’s eyes went wide. “Where did you get that?”
“Not so in the shadows now, is it? Jesus, you know plenty.”
“The younger generation doesn’t know about this, Marsh.”
I thought of Wade Hester, who was sick when he found out what his dad had done.
“Then I’ll take the old men,” I said. “They’ve been at it their whole lives. But I need one an hour if you want to be in office in the morning.”
“How?” He squinted. “You expect me to wake these people up in the middle of the night? Tell them to turn themselves in?”
“Or I can take you down,” I said. “Piece by piece. I’ll start with your marriage. That young girl inside. I’ll drag her ass out of bed. Then I’ll take your job. Put you in prison.”
“Detective.” He swallowed.
“Or I’ll make you a deal,” I said. “One an hour, and when I’m done, I hand you this.” I held up the ledger. “You text me an address, and they surrender to the state police. Admit who they paid and when . . . and nothing comes up from me about the Order. About a conspiracy. Nothing about the governor’s office. It’s just some racist old boys. They can say it was how they were raised. It clears the news cycle in a few weeks; you can hand this ledger back to your friends—and you keep your job.”
Monroe stared. “You’re leaving me wide open,” Monroe said. “These are my supporters.”
“At least you’re not in jail. You can stay in the governor’s mansion. Come here on weekends and think. I bet the Websters would call that a nice life.”
The governor didn’t speak for a minute, and I waited. His face was as white as the railing that bordered the porch.
“Tell me where to head first,” I said.
“Gwinnett County,” he said, his voice barely a whisper. “You’ll get texted an address in the next few minutes.”
I got in the car and waved for the state guys to follow me.