I’d exaggerated when I’d told Godrell Graham that Blackeye’s Fish Camp had a restaurant. It was a roofed-in bait-and-tackle shop that also sold cold sandwiches that you could eat at the picnic tables they kept out back. Pauly, the owner, kept a shotgun behind the counter though he said he’d only shot it once and that was at a mullet jumping near the riverbank on a drunken afternoon. You could launch a boat or for a dollar a day you could fish from the pier. My dad had taken me there to catch redfish when I was a boy and I’d taken Thomas to do the same.
When I pulled into the parking lot at a quarter to two a black stretch limousine was idling by some empty boat trailers.
I knocked on the driver’s window and a young black man in a white cotton shirt and a black chauffeur cap rolled it down. ‘Are you with Mr Graham?’ I asked.
He stared at me with amused slate-green eyes. ‘You’re late. He’s already inside.’
I went into the shop. It was packed with fishing rods, reels and lures, and you could buy fresh baitfish and shrimp from coolers by the cash register. I got a Miller and a ham sandwich out of the refrigerator case and took them to the counter. ‘Hey, BB,’ Pauly said and rang up the total.
‘You know if there’s a Jamaican man who might be looking for me?’ I asked.
‘Three of ’em. In back.’
I went outside to the river. Two large men in navy-blue suits stood watching the water from an embankment of sand, broken concrete and tar paper that had blown off a nearby roof when the remnants of a gulf-coast hurricane had blown through. The men were Graham’s bodyguards, and I wondered how a mid-level Foreign Ministry employee justified them to his bosses. Graham, in a charcoal suit, was short and thin with graying hair and was as soft-featured as his daughter had been. He stood by the building, talking on a cell phone which he hung up as soon as he saw me. The bodyguards eyed me, seemed to decide I was no threat and went back to watching the water.
‘Mr Byrd?’ Graham extended a hand to shake.
I nodded. ‘You don’t want a sandwich?’
He curled his lips for a moment as if I was telling an unfunny joke.
We sat at a picnic table in the afternoon sun.
‘Show me the pictures,’ he said.
‘I don’t have them any more,’ I said.
‘What happened to them?’
‘I destroyed them,’ I said. ‘I didn’t like what was in them.’
‘I don’t understand.’
‘As I said this morning, a friend of mine was at the party with Tralena. She was in the pictures too. They were terrible pictures. I destroyed them.’
His eyes sparked with anger but his voice remained calm. ‘Then what are you trying to sell me?’
I unwrapped my sandwich and took a bite. ‘I found the pictures in Don Melchiori’s house,’ I said. ‘They’re probably also on his camera or on his computer. If you want them you can send your men for them. All I want is to know what you’re doing about Tralena’s death. She died four months ago and you told me you’ve been in Florida for two weeks. That’s when people around here started dying.’
‘We grieve in our own ways,’ he said and folded his hands on the table. ‘I understand business, Mr Byrd. Give me numbers and I’m in heaven. I find comfort in such things. If I can buy an answer to what happened to Tralena, I’ll do so. The other work I’ll leave to the police and men trained to handle this kind of thing.’
‘I’ve heard you were a regular at Don Melchiori’s parties,’ I said. ‘Who else was there?’
He smiled faintly and I suspected he was covering anger. ‘Did Don tell you I was a regular?’
‘Does it matter?’ I asked. ‘Who else was there?’
He looked annoyed. ‘You say your friend is dead? Was that Belinda Mabry?’
I nodded.
‘I knew Belinda,’ he said. ‘She was an attractive woman and very smart. Her husband and I did business.’
‘Cocaine.’
He laughed at me and said, ‘I wasn’t surprised when I heard that Belinda was at Melchiori’s party with my daughter. Belinda was adventurous. But my daughter wasn’t. She was sixteen years old. Still a child. They got her high and assaulted and killed her. Belinda Mabry, this smart and attractive woman who still apparently holds power over you, did that to Tralena. There’s nothing you can do to change that.’
‘I’m aware of that.’
‘Then please explain again what it is you want from me.’
I asked, ‘How well did you know Belinda and her husband?’
‘Well enough. Stilman had family. I had family. We invited them and their boy down to visit twice in the last year that they lived in Chicago.’
‘What did you think of Terrence?’ I asked.
‘What about him?’ For the first time I thought I heard the calm in his voice break.
‘Did Stilman involve him in his business?’
‘I don’t think he trusted him,’ he said.
‘It sounds like you didn’t either.’
‘The last time they visited was three and a half years ago,’ he said. ‘Terrence was twenty-one. Tralena was twelve. She saw this good-looking young man from Chicago and she liked what she saw. Terrence didn’t put her down. He treated her like her love was real but never crossed the line. That’s what I thought. But one afternoon, my wife came home and found him in bed with Tralena.’ His voice was level again though I heard the strain in it.
‘I’m sorry,’ I said.
‘That’s how it sometimes happens. But no, I don’t trust him.’ A motorboat cut toward the fishing camp dock, banked and ran back toward the middle of the river. The wake lines swelled behind it and washed slowly toward shore. ‘If you want to know what real obsession looks like you should’ve seen Tralena when they left. She was crazy for that boy. Crazy. And Stilman told me his son was crazy for her too.’
‘Do you think Terrence found out how Tralena died?’ I asked.
‘I don’t know.’
‘Melchiori thinks he’s responsible for the killings here.’
He eyed me with interest. ‘I wouldn’t know about that. I’m a quiet man. I do my business without hurting anyone. But God knows Jerry Stilman could be violent when he needed to be. Living in a house like his, Terrence would have learned violence.’
‘He seems soft,’ I said.
Graham shook his head. ‘Nothing soft about that boy.’
I looked at the river. A single palm tree threw a shadow that intersected the embankment. I said, ‘So your daughter dies and you’re just going to let things play out however they do?’
‘Seems like the problem’s taking care of itself, I think.’
‘So far, three women who were at the party and one of their roommates have died and a man who didn’t even want to be there has been run down by a car. If Terrence is doing this, why wouldn’t he go after Melchiori and the other men first?’
‘Maybe he did. I hear that Melchiori got shot.’
Graham didn’t need to know the details. ‘But he’s still alive,’ I said.
‘When they put the bag over my little girl’s face, she didn’t die right away. She had time to become afraid. Time to know that she was dying. If Stilman’s boy is doing this, he might want Melchiori and the others to have time to be afraid too.’
When Graham and his bodyguards drove away in his limousine, I called Charles.
He answered, ‘Hey, where are you?’
‘I decided to go fishing.’
‘Ha.’
‘I tracked down Godrell Graham,’ I said.
‘Good for you. What did he tell you?’
‘He’s definitely tied to Melchiori and the parties. I think he knows who’s behind the killings and he’s probably encouraging him. But he’s not the killer himself.’
‘No,’ he said. ‘The killer is Terrence.’
‘Huh?’
‘Aggie woke up and started talking,’ he said. ‘She was ripped up pretty bad but I could understand what she was saying.’
‘Terrence did that to her?’
‘None other.’
A chill ran down my back. ‘I want to go after him on my own,’ I told him.
‘You sure?’
I was never less sure of anything. He was my son, and I felt his closeness to me as though he’d been an unseen ghost whose presence I’d never sensed until he’d suddenly materialized and told me he’d been haunting me all my adult life. ‘He’s mine,’ I said. ‘He needs to be.’
‘I guess so. If you want help you know how to find me.’
‘Thanks, Charles. Did you get Aggie to the hospital?’
‘No. Too complicated with her talking like that.’
‘For God’s sake, Charles. Take her to the hospital.’
‘Too late,’ he said.
Another chill ran down my back. ‘What do you mean “too late”?’
‘Jesus Christ, don’t be an asshole. What do you think I mean?’