Chapter 15

By nine o’clock the next morning Connor again was heading north on highway 41 through the Francis Marion Forest. He left Clooney back at the bar with a large bowl of water and the radio tuned to a smooth jazz station to keep him company. One of his greatest joys in life was to ride shotgun next to Connor, seat belt strapped across his chest, nose edged out the window to catch the aromas of the road. Unsafe and worthy of a citation, but the old guy refused to sit in the back, where he would start howling like his progenitor wolf ancestors.

Based on the property records Caitlin had sent him, Connor had cobbled together a rough plat depicting where the Lomax properties were located. He’d been able to overlay the specs on a Google map print-out, noticed the combined parcels included two miles on the south side of something called Santee Road, as well as several touchpoints where it intersected with the creek she had identified as Wittee Branch. He knew it was a long shot that the shredded cloth patch he’d recovered from the thorn in the ditch would connect Lomax Industries to Willis Ronson’s death, but it was all he had.

Before setting out, Connor had viewed both videos twice more, this time looking for guideposts along the road. The camera had been aimed out the window a good amount of the time, mostly capturing spindly pines and second-growth saplings and wild tangles of undergrowth. Occasionally, however, a sign would flash by, usually facing the other way for traffic coming from the opposite direction, thus making it impossible to read. One of them, however, was angled just enough so he could make out the words “Church of the Nazarene 4 M.” He figured if he could find that sign, he could trace the bus route in the video along the narrow, hardscrabble road and locate the turn-off that was marked by a gate, where the dirt road cut deep into the thick woods.

It took him an hour of driving one way and then the other before he matched several landmarks to screen grabs he’d saved to his phone. Next, by driving at the same approximate speed that the bus seemed to be traveling, he was able to zero-in on the location of the gate. Turned out it wasn’t all that difficult to find: an eight-foot-high line of hurricane fencing with razor wire spooled on top began a half mile from the southeast corner of what he figured was the Lomax property and ran along the roadway on the far side of a shallow ditch.

A dirt road cut to the left and snaked through the pines, muddy tracks indicating that at least a few vehicles had driven through since the last rain had fallen. It was marked by a green marker on a galvanized pole, no lettering or logo, which Connor recognized from the first file. This was where the bus had pulled off the pavement and the driver had used his key to open the lock, then had proceeded through to whatever lay beyond.

Connor pulled off the road and edged up to the gate. It was clear he wasn’t going to get past the fence; it was too high and the razor wire too sharp. He sat there a moment, peering through the windshield, trying to make out what was out there in the trees. His instincts, aided by GPS, had brought him out here to the distant reaches of nowhere, and there was nothing but a vast, haunting silence in all directions. Not a gust of wind, not a flicker of movement. Just an eerie, quiet stillness that had settled across the land.

Then he heard the crack of gunfire. Distant, yet distinct. A rifle, and not just any rifle. An M4. Connor recognized that sound, the same sound that filled the burned-out neighborhoods of Kirkuk with fear and dread, and continued to penetrate even the deepest of his dreams.

Another shot burst through the woods five seconds later, then another. One at a time, then in short blasts, as whoever had their fingers on triggers were getting the hang of it. Unlike the single-fire feature of the semi-automatic AR-15, the M4—when set to fully automatic fire—was capable of discharging hundreds of rounds a minute, at almost three thousand feet per second. Definitely not a hunting weapon.

The shooting continued for a good twenty, maybe thirty minutes. There were several long volleys of gunfire, then the shots would fade to nothing until there were more bursts. Connor’s Google search had told him several gun ranges operated within the national forest, but they were miles away. Plus, the frenetic firing suggested these shooters were not sportsmen or hunters firing at targets, but rather amateur warriors taking random potshots.

When it was clear the shooting had ceased permanently, Connor started the engine and reversed away from the gate. He shifted into drive and bumped further up the county road until he was able to back off the blacktop into a dense thicket of undergrowth. The sun percolated through the branches overhead, the sky a brilliant blue canopy void of a single cloud, save for the thin line of a contrail forty thousand feet above. A gentle breeze was drifting in from the west, bringing with it the smell of decaying bark and moldy leaves from the soggy wetlands. Plus, the unmistakable odor of a decomposing animal somewhere in the trees, its presence confirmed by a couple of turkey vultures circling the thermals high above.

Eventually the perfect silence was displaced by the sound of an engine. Distant at first, then increasingly closer until an old box truck rumbled out of the forest and pulled up to the gate in the distance. Connor grabbed a pair of field glasses from the passenger seat and tried to get a good look at it through the brambles and scrub. He watched as the driver climbed down from the bus, unlocked the gate, drove through the fencing, then locked the gate again. By now he had a good line of sight on the vehicle, saw it was painted in standard military camo colors.

Naturally. If you’re going to play army, you might as well look the part.

He keyed the engine to life as the truck edged forward and made a right turn onto the county road. He waited a good ten seconds before he pulled out from his thicket and made a broad turn that took him in the same direction. At this point the vehicle was just a speck on the road far ahead, which told him the driver would have a hard time spotting even a bright red car in the side- and rear-view mirrors.

Connor followed at a safe distance for the next fifteen miles, hanging back as it made a left turn onto Highway 41, then a quick right onto two lanes of blacktop known as Saints Delight Road. Still heading east, but now there was a little more traffic, which meant Connor was able to let an older SUV get between him and his target. It remained there, creating a visual buffer until it eventually made a right turn onto a busier road.

Then another vehicle pulled out from a church parking lot between them, providing convenient visual interference until they hit Alt-17. That was a four-lane highway with a median strip in the middle and an increased speed limit, which meant Connor needed to step on the gas if he was going to maintain visual contact.

Eventually they came to the outskirts of Georgetown, marked by gas stations and thrift shops and brightly colored shipping containers selling fireworks, since the Fourth of July was only a few weeks away. Connor was getting hungry and impatient, mostly at himself for wasting an entire morning because of a video that came from a deceased bail skip via a mysterious phone number to an estranged wife—now a widow—and possibly involved a woman who claimed to be someone she wasn’t.

He was ready to give up when the driver of the box truck—now only seventy yards ahead—put on his turn signal and edged into the left lane. This was going to be tricky, since it would be obvious if Connor pulled up right behind him, so he continued driving until he reached the next left turn a few hundred yards up the road. He made a U-turn, then stayed in the slow lane until he determined that the camo vehicle had pulled into the driveway of an establishment marked by a large sign that read “Mercer’s Bay Outfitters LLC.”

The same business that was owned by Lester McIlvain, whose F-250 4X4 had been parked behind the Top Shot shooting range in West Ashley.

Connor found a parking space in the front lot and cut the engine. Cold air had been pouring out from the dashboard vents but now, when he opened the door to step out, a wall of heat hit him like an oven being yanked open. Instant sweat.

The box truck was not in the lot, which meant it must have pulled through an opening in the chain link fence he’d noticed around back. Anchored by the corner of the farm supply store and a detached pre-fab steel warehouse, the enclosed yard was stacked high with old wooden pallets, industrial-sized bags of fertilizer and top soil, and a full line of mowers, tractors, and front loaders. New and pre-owned. A forklift was moving a shipment of mulch, and a salesman was demonstrating the features of an all-terrain vehicle, also done up in camo. Half a dozen vehicles, mostly pickups, were parked toward the rear, and Connor figured they belonged to the employees, so paying customers could use the spaces out front.

He wiped a trickle of moisture from his forehead, then made his way toward the gate, where there was no sign telling him to Keep Out. Always of the belief that it was best to ask forgiveness rather than permission, he entered the compound and began wandering through the assorted machinery as if he were there to buy something. No one told him to get out, no one approached him with a marketing pitch. In fact, no one said a word until he wandered up to the box truck and ran a hand across the camouflage.

“Help you?” said a voice behind him. Terse, almost accusatory.

Connor turned and faced the voice, pretty sure it belonged to the guy he’d seen back in the woods climbing down from the cab and unlocking the gate.

“This your truck?” he asked.

“Who are you?”

“Name’s Jack,” Connor said. “Just admiring the paint job on your truck, here.”

“Pretty sweet, huh?” the driver said, easing up on his wary approach. “Except it’s vinyl, not paint. Look closer.”

“For real?” Connor examined the pattern up close, ran his hand along the camo design. “You’re shitting me.”

“No one paints things anymore. It’s all done with computers and printers these days. Takes only a day to lay it down, and it’s easy to take off someday if you want to sell it. Unlike paint, which is on it for good.”

“I’ll be damned,” Connor said. “Think they could do something like this to my RV?”

“They can do anything you want,” the guy replied. “But you gotta go all the way down to Charleston to get it done. A bit of a hike, but it’s worth it.”

“You mind telling me who did yours?”

“Sure. Place called Lowcountry Vinyl and Tint. There’s others, but those guys do great work and the price is fair. No questions asked.”

Goddamn, Connor thought. The last place Willis Ronson worked before he died.

“And it only takes a day?”

“Yeah, but an RV might be longer. Give ‘em a call, and they’ll give you a quote. Tell ‘em Gilbert Moore sent you.”

“I’ll do that,” Connor said as he stored the name away and walked toward the rear of the truck. He pretended to admire the work, until his eye caught the same logo on the rear bumper as he’d seen once before:

“This ‘two ayem’ thing,” he asked. “Does that indicate a time for something?”

A scowl formed on the face of the man named Gilbert Moore. “You ask too damned many questions,” he said.

“Guess I’m a curious kind of guy. Anyway, thanks for the tip. I’ll give this Lowcountry Vinyl place a call.”

“You do that,” Moore said. Crossing his arms, standing firm at the bumper of his truck until Connor was heading back through the gate toward his car.

Forty minutes later, just past the turnoff for McClellanville on his way back to Charleston, Caitlin Thomas called.

“I found your Liz Morgan,” she told him.

“Seriously?” Connor asked, immediately humbled by her success where he had only stumbled. “I looked and looked but came up with squat.”

“Well, yeah. And so did I, at first. Then I figured there had to be a reason for that, so I tried something else. After a whole lot of nothing, I found a little something that explains it. Well, sort of. And sort of not. Do you have something to write with?”

“I’m driving,” he explained. “Just tell me now, and text me later?”

“Copy that,” Caitlin confirmed. “Here’s the thing: you’re right about Liz Morgan. While it’s a pretty common name, no one matches it in any of its syntactic permutations. No Elizabeth Morgan, no Eliza Morgan. No Lisa Morgan. No one with that phone number, at least not in the tri-state area.”

“But you found her anyway, even though she’s a ghost?”

“Thing is, Connor, she’s a ghost, but her phone is very real. Not now, I mean. It’s been turned off and probably fed through a stump grinder, but at some point that number existed.”

“All I got was voicemail when I called it,” he said.

“More than the dead air I got. But here’s the thing: in order to set up a voicemail account, just about any cell phone—burner or not—has to go through a carrier. Whether you get it at Walgreens or Best Buy, there’s a real-live telecommunications company providing access.”

Connor was coming up behind a propane truck and instinctively slowed down. Ever since Iraq he had a phobia about following any vehicle too closely, passing one, or having one tail him too tight on his bumper. He tapped the brake, to fall back, then said, “Does that mean you were able to identify the phone company and track the usage?”

“Well, sort of, but that was the easy part,” she replied. “What’s more important is I was able to trace the payment method that was used to set it up.”

“You mean you found the real person behind Liz Morgan?”

“Well, that’s what I meant by sort of and sort of not,” Caitlin explained. “Thing is, the phone appears to have been paid for with plastic. Would’ve been smarter to get it fully prepaid, so she wouldn’t have had to go directly through the carrier. Instead, she—Liz, or whatever her name really was—linked the service to an actual credit card account.”

“You mean like a Visa?” Connor asked.

“Mastercard, actually, but yeah. And I tracked it down.”

“Seriously? We have the ability to do that?”

“That’s another one of those ‘sort of, sort of not’ things,” she said, a deliberate vagueness in her voice. “But in this case, what I mean is, I was able to pinpoint the account that was used to link it to the phone company.”

“Are you going to tell me who it is?” he asked.

“What, not who,” Caitlin replied. “Turns out Liz Morgan really is the U.S. government in drag.”

“Government, like the FBI?”

“Actually, Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms.”

“You’re shitting me. Liz Morgan works for the ATF?”

“Whoever bought this phone does,” she confirmed. “That’s the ‘sort of’ part. The ‘sort of not’ part is that they employ over ten thousand people, and a lot of them are women. She could be any one of them.”

Twenty minutes after hanging up, Connor took a backwoods detour through an area known as Cainhoy to swing by Lowcountry Vinyl.

Alex Reese was in the back of the shop, using a plastic squeegee to apply a full wrap to a cargo van owned by a local heating and air company. The tourist bus was gone, as was the orange Mustang that was getting black chrome hood stripes. Reese seemed ready to take a break and showed Connor into his office, grabbing a warm cola from a long drafting table as they passed by.

“You’d be surprised how many people come in asking for camo,” he said after Connor explained why he was there again. “Camo trucks, camo Jeeps, camo ATVs. We especially get a lot of jobs for them just before hunting season.”

Connor brought an image up on his cell phone, turned it to show to Reese. “How about this one?” he asked. “Guy who owns it said it was one of yours.”

Reese peered at the photo, slowly nodded. “Yeah, that’s our work. Company called Palmetto Nature Expeditions. We did a couple wraps for them—that truck, a few ATVs, and an old school bus. That thing shouldn’t even be on the road, it’s so filled with rust. Any event, I think it was Willis referred them to us. All cash job, too.”

“When was this?”

“Not long before he quit. A week, maybe two. We’re backed up, so it took a while to get ‘em on our calendar.”

Connor recalled that Reese had told him Ronson had stopped showing up for work six or eight weeks ago, so that would have pegged the job to about two months back. “You have an address for them?” he asked.

“It’s in the files,” Reese told him. “I’ll get it.”

“How ‘bout that cop you were talking about, the one that made Ronson bolt?”

“No go. Guess I never made up a folder for him, and he never came back. Hang tight and I’ll get that address for you.”

“I’d appreciate it if you could.”

The files were just that: several credenza drawers stuffed with hand-labeled manila folders. Reese dug through them, eventually pulled one out and sorted through another stack of papers jammed inside. “Someday we’ll get around to computerizing all this,” he said as he plucked out an invoice. “You have something to write with?”

“Just tell it to me and I’ll text it to myself,” Connor replied.

Reese read it off the piece of paper, including a phone number, then asked, “You think this has something to do with how Ronson died?”

“Checking every angle, is all. I really appreciate the help.”

He turned to go, noticed the hood of an old truck leaning against Reese’s office wall. Originally it had been white, but now it was plastered with vinyl logos from dozens of local companies. Car dealerships, plumbing firms, painting contractors, roofing companies. And in one corner, a small oval with 2AM printed on it.

“Hey…I’m starting to see those stickers all over Charleston,” Connor said, pointing at it. “Any idea what it stands for?”

“Beats me. I figure it’s got to do with real early in the morning. Matter of fact, we printed and cut them for the same company that did the camo trucks. We printed too many of them, and I got stuck with the extras, if you want one.”