Chapter 21

Before Connor left the Bowl-A-Rama he made absolutely sure Jordan James could operate his Bentley without endangering himself or others. Not convinced, he followed the man back to Charleston, hanging back a hundred yards until he pulled into his driveway and made it through the gate that led to the carriage house in back. Convinced he was safe—and other drivers were safe from him—Connor headed home to Folly, staying in the right lane and keeping both eyes open for unmarked cop cars.

Nelson Burdette called him just as he was pulling into his space beneath the drinking deck. He cut the engine and got out, answering his phone as he juggled his keys.

“I thought you were spending the day with your wife and kids,” Connor said.

“We stopped for ice cream on the way home, and I don’t want it to drip all over the car,” the SLED cop replied. “Plus, I didn’t want them to hear what I’m about to tell you.”

“You mean that Lyle Hicks killed his lawyer?”

“Dammit, Connor. Where did you hear that?”

“Bad news travels fast. I assume it’s true?”

Burdette hesitated a second, probably figuring the best way to play this. Then he said, “That’s the going theory, yes. We’re looking at surveillance footage from his doorbell, and the house across the street. Seems Hicks wasn’t worried about being sloppy.”

“I take it he’s still on the loose?”

“We have a bulletin out for his arrest, but wherever he is at present is anyone’s guess.”

Connor checked his watch, saw it was already half past four. He could see Julie upstairs at the bar, getting ready for another long evening, and he needed to join her. “What about his wife?” he asked.

“She’s safe.”

“Good to know. And I hate to do this, but I’m late for work.”

“The limes and olives can wait a second,” Burdette said. “You need to know that Hicks is in possession of a firearm. A Glock, to be precise.”

Not exactly, Connor thought. Unless the guy had two of them. “Is that how he killed his lawyer?” he asked.

“You know I can’t comment on that. But you need to be careful until we have this shit-for-brains in custody. You scared him off once, but he’ll be back.”

“I can take care of myself,” Connor assured him.

“You can until you can’t,” Burdette countered. “Which is why you may see a car rolling by your place every now and then.”

“You’re providing me security?”

“Such as it is. Meanwhile, promise to let me know if you see anything suspicious.”

“After nine-one-one, you’re first on my list,” Connor said.

Connor had just settled in behind the bar and was mixing a couple margaritas when a low-pressure system announced itself with spears of lightning and rolls of thunder in the distance.

Rain pummeled the sand in large, hard drops, and the wind swirled through the palmettos and oaks and sweet gums lining the road. The deluge continued for a good part of the evening. Sundays typically produced a steady stream of patrons, but the beach emptied out early and only a few die-hard locals ventured out into the night for a cold beer or a margarita.

One of these was Jimmy Brinks, who showed up around ten o’clock. Connor caught sight of him trudging up the wheelchair ramp, threads of water dripping from his scraggly hair and a soaked T-shirt plastered to his skin. By the time the erstwhile thief had planted his ass on a stool, Connor had poured a couple fingers of Jack Daniels into his special glass tumbler and set it on the bar in front of him.

Brinks picked it up and knocked half of it back, then set the glass back on the counter. “You are one dumb sumbitch,” he said, smacking his lips.

“You’re the one out in the rain tonight,” Connor replied.

“And you’re standing behind that counter, in full view of anyone might just be passing by on the street.”

“Meaning?”

“Meaning, you got a big bullseye painted on you.”

Connor ran his rag over the counter, even though there was nothing to wipe. “Where’d you hear that?” he asked.

“Never mind that. Fact is, there’s a mean motherfucker on your ass, already capped his lawyer. Word is, you’re next on his list.”

“Yeah, I heard,” Connor said, thinking where the hell does Brinks get his information.

“Yet there you stand, doing shit while he could be lining you up right now.” He knocked back the rest of his sour mash, indicated he wanted a refill.

Connor splashed another measure into the glass, set the bottle on the bar. “Wouldn’t be the first time,” he said.

“Don’t say I didn’t warn you,” Brinks replied, downing the amber liquid in one gulp and rising from the stool. He dropped a wad of bills down, gently tapped the bar before he turned to go. “Then again, it didn’t save your ass last time, did it?”

Ten seconds later he blended into the rain and the night and was gone.

Connor closed the place down before midnight. The lightning and thunder had faded, the low front had retreated out to sea, and Julie had gone home early. No need to make her hang around when business was so slow. No boogeymen showed up, no shots were fired. A black SUV with government written all over it rolled past The Sandbar a few times, but there was no sign of Lyle Hicks. Which didn’t mean he wasn’t out there in the darkness, keeping an eye on things.

Waiting for the right moment to strike.

The next morning, Connor Googled Byram Higgins while he wolfed down a toaster waffle. First off, the man was alive. That was good. Eighty-five years old, maybe not so good. Memories start to be unreliable around that age, and Connor wanted to know whatever Higgins could tell him about Colt Lomax. Or at least what the old man cared to tell him.

Several websites listed him as senior partner emeritus at his former law firm, which meant he was still on the letterhead but not the payroll. He was the former member of a dozen local boards and community organizations, but none now. A blurb from ten years ago mentioned a wife named Helen, but no word about children or grandchildren. Connor assumed there had to be several. Offspring, not wives. Maybe wives, as well.

At one time he’d lived in the toney South of Broad area of Charleston, a couple blocks from Jordan James’ waterfront mansion on Murray Boulevard. Now he owned a house on Kiawah Island, not far from the beach, which suggested he’d done well in his law career, but not quite well enough to own a place directly on the sand. Connor obtained the address from another proprietary database, but the Google camera apparently was not allowed past the twenty-four-hour guarded gatehouse. Hence no street view. He also got a phone number, which—given Higgins’ age—he figured was probably a landline. Maybe an old one, maybe disconnected. Maybe only hooked up to a fax machine. Whatever it was connected to, he dialed it.

Four rings later, a voice answered, “Higgins residence. How may I help you?” Southern accent, smooth and silky. Female. Polite, yet suspicious at the same time.

“May I please speak with Byram Higgins?” Connor asked.

“Who’s calling?”

At least the number was correct, and the aging lawyer probably was there. “Please tell him it’s Jack Connor, from Citadel Security.”

“You’re calling from The Citadel?” Confusion and wariness in her voice.

“No, Citadel Security.” Not quite a lie, since the bail bonds company was a subsidiary of Jordan James’ security firm.

“What’s this regarding?” she asked.

He could give her all sorts of subterfuge, try to mislead her about why he was calling, what he wanted. But there was no point, since she clearly was the gatekeeper and Connor needed to get past her. “I’m doing some research for a project, and I’d like to get his thoughts on state politics.”

“He gets exhausted easily,” the woman replied.

“All I need is ten minutes. I promise I won’t tire him out.”

His request drew a moment of silence as she gave it some thought. Then she said, “Can you be here at one? He’ll have finished his lunch by then, and won’t have started his occupational therapy yet. The intellectual stimulation will be good for him.”

Known for its sun-washed days and star-studded skies, Kiawah Island was named for the tribe that had lived there prior to the arrival of English settlers in the sixteen-hundreds. As new arrivals always seem wont to do, they pushed out the indigenous people and seized the land. In this case it was passed down for centuries until, in the early 1950s, when a lumberman from Georgia purchased it and began building a modest community near the shore. Following his death, his heirs sold the entire parcel to a firm of wealthy Kuwaiti investors, who subsequently developed the place as a world-class resort.

Famous for its lush maritime forests, brackish ponds, and salt marshes, the barrier island was home to several dozen varieties of mammals and hundreds of species of resident and migratory birds. The most notable inhabitants, however, were the rich and near-rich who built massive estates tucked in amongst the live oaks and pines and palmettos, monuments to excess that could only be seen by visitors who were granted access past the twenty-four-hour manned gatehouse.

The Higgins house was one of these. A southern colonial with symmetrical double-stacked porches, it was set on a quiet lagoon at the edge of a golf course. Accessed by a circular driveway and a central stairway that led up to the front veranda, it was shaded by sweetgums and poplars and tupelos. The siding was forest green shingles, and a van was parked in front of one of the wood-grained carriage doors, its roof clearance too high for it to fit into the garage space beneath the elevated house. The vehicle’s side windows were all tinted dark, and a collapsible lift was attached to the passenger-side sliding door.

Connor pulled in behind the van a few minutes before the appointed hour. He studied the handicap lift, figured there had to be an elevator somewhere in the bowels of the garage, but he opted for the stairs that took him up to the first-floor porch. When he rang the bell, a blue light indicated that a camera had been activated, and someone deep within the dwelling muttered something inaudible to him. Thirty seconds later there was movement behind the sheer drape that covered the glass, followed by a series of clicks. Then the door opened, and a woman poked her head out.

“Mr. Connor?” she asked in the same smooth, southern voice of earlier that morning. She was wearing white jeans and a pale top the color of key lime pie, silver sand dollar earrings. No name badge, no sign of her being a professional caregiver. A daughter or niece, maybe? Certainly not Higgins’ wife.

Then again, one never knew.

“Sorry if I’m a bit early,” he said. “It’s always hard to second-guess the traffic coming down here.”

“Especially during beach season,” she concurred. “Follow me.”

She walked him through a living room that could have been featured in Coastal Living, furniture color-coordinated in light blues and grays, nautical motif and shell patterns throughout. There was a broad view across the lagoon to the ocean, which this morning looked like a sheet of tin foil glimmering in the sun.

They continued down a hallway fitted with an Oriental carpet runner, and finally stopped at a closed pocket door. “He’s just had a bowl of shrimp and grits, so he may be a little lethargic,” she said. “And cranky.”

“Who wouldn’t be?”

“This is his library. He spends most of his day in here, including his naps. You have fifteen minutes.”

That was five more than he’d asked for, but much less than he thought he might need. She slid the door open halfway and he edged inside. Higgins was slumped in a battery-powered chair, fitted with a keypad and a joystick, staring out the window of a room that looked more like an art gallery than a library. Not many books, just a lot of photos and maps on the walls and a large flat-screen TV tuned to a cable channel Connor never watched. The volume was muted, but the news ticker running across the bottom provided an update on the news of the day. Or at least a politicized version of it.

“There’s a button on his armrest if he needs me,” the woman informed him. She stood there, as if thinking of anything else to say, then abruptly turned and left. He heard the pocket door roll closed behind him, then moved into Higgins’ line of sight.

“Good morning, sir,” he said to the man huddled in the chair. “I’m Jack Connor. Thank you for agreeing to meet with me.”

“When did I do that?” Higgins asked.

“I called this morning. The woman who answered the phone said to come by at one.”

“That woman is my daughter, so don’t go getting any ideas.”

Daughter. That explained the relationship, as well as her protective approach to her old man. And, it seemed, vice versa.

“No, sir. My ideas are strictly professional.”

“Especially with all those the tattoos,” Higgins continued, as if he hadn’t heard Connor’s reply. “When I was your age that meant you either spent time in the military or grew up on the wrong side of the tracks.”

Correct on both counts, sir, Connor thought. “I like to think of them as an art collection I can take wherever I go,” he said instead.

“As long as you don’t sell it for an arm and a leg,” Higgins replied, chuckling at his attempt at humor. “Then again, I’m stuck in this damned chair. Stroke screwed up my whole right side. Doctors called it an aneurysmal dilatation, but I know what it was. Fingers on my left side can work a keyboard, so I Googled it.”

“Well, I do appreciate you agreeing to see me on such short notice,” Connor replied, not sure that the man had actually agreed to any such thing. Nor was he convinced this meeting would be at all productive.

Higgins didn’t respond right away as he appeared to be running a search function in his brain. Then his eyes lit up in an a-ha moment and he said, “You’re the one Adrienne said was interested in this state’s bullshit politics, and such.”

“That’s right,” Connor said, figuring Adrienne and the daughter were one and the same. “But mostly I want to ask you what you know about a man name of Colt Lomax.”

For a man who’d had an aneurysmal dilatation, Higgins’ brain seemed to function just fine. At the mention of Lomax’s name his eyes blinked to high alert, and he said, “The chicken man? Yeah, I know the prick. Why do you ask?”

“Something I’m looking into,” Connor replied, keeping his words nebulous and his purpose vague.

“Well, don’t.”

He cocked his head at the abrupt answer and said, “Sir?”

“He’s not a man to mess with. Not in politics or anything.”

“That’s what I’ve heard. Tell me why they call him the Carolina Kingmaker.”

“They call him a lot of things,” Higgins said with a wheeze. “And whoever they are, they’re right. No one goes through the meatgrinder in this state without going up against Lomax, since there’s no going around him.”

They were both talking in generalities, and Connor had gone there looking for specifics. “I’m told he can be a real sonofabitch,” he observed.

“You’re being way too kind,” Higgins said with what could only be described as a chortle. “That motherfucker likes to think he hit a home run in business, but he forgets he was born on third base.”

“Because his father started the company?”

“Well, sure, there’s that, and he did turn it around when he got control of it. But his momma was the one brought money into that family. Tobacco heiress whose lucre goes way back.”

“You don’t see that mentioned in his bio,” Connor agreed.

“Not something he likes to admit. ‘Self-made’ has a better ring to it, and he likes people to think he’s a real King Midas. The man with the golden touch, and if anything—anyone—ever got in his way, he’d just buy himself a new loophole or kill off a pesky law. Or a lawmaker.”

“Seriously?” Connor asked.

“Figuratively,” the old man replied with a nod and a shrug at the same time. “But maybe literally, too. Nothing in this state is sacred. Or as it seems. Politics has always been about the flow of money, and Lomax is a master at controlling the spigot. And I can tell you, no other bastard has killed more political ambitions in this state, destroyed the lives of a lot of good men. A few women, too. Rumors, innuendoes, lies—they’re all his power tools, and he wields them like a pro.”

“How does Garrett Tipton fit in?”

“Tipton’s nothing more than his chew toy du jour, a means to an end,” Higgins observed. “Fact is, Lomax’s all about power, always has been. Quid pro quo. This for that. If Garrett gets to the White House, Colt will have the douchebag’s testicles in a vice.”

Connor winced at the mental image, said, “Sounds painful.”

“It will be, and Garrett knows it. Or should. Problem is, he’s so blinded by ambition he can’t see the train coming at him. And by the time he does, it might be too late.”

“Too late for what?”

“To avoid the chaos Lomax’s capable of,” Higgins explained. His right hand lay motionless on the armrest of his chair, but his left was trembling like a dog that had just been rescued from a frozen pond. “Between you and me, the guy misplaced his marbles years ago. Four of his staffers who were caught up in that January sixth thing, and he paid their lawyer’s fees. Word is, he’s funding some of the dark groups that are calling for blood in the streets.”

“You mean, like civil war?”

“Lomax craves power the way a heroin addict craves his next high,” Higgins said. “I believe he’s working his way toward a major overdose.”

Too many of Connor’s buddies had travelled that very path with opioids, and had hit that point of no return. A few were lucky to find their way back, but most had been buried by wives or mothers or fathers who were left behind to try to make sense of it all.

“And when that happens?” he asked.

“I hope the good Lord takes me before it does.”

“A minute ago you said there’s no going around Lomax,” Connor said, attempting to steer him back on track. “What do you think he’s capable of if someone did?”

The old lawyer fell quiet for a moment, as if he was giving the question some serious thought. Then he asked, “You’ve already come up against him, haven’t you?”

“Indirectly,” Connor said.

“And that’s the real reason you’re here.”

“The real reason is that several people are dead, and I think Lomax’s hands have blood on them.”

Higgins stared at Connor with his steel-blue eyes, partially obscured by a fold of skin shadowing his brow. “Here’s the deal…what did you say your name was, Mr.—?”

“Connor.”

“Right. Connor. So, Mr. Connor…I’m going to tell you what you really came here to learn. Although you may not have realized it. Whoever it was told you to talk to me, probably told you I ran a lot of campaigns in my day. State level, although a couple were national. Anyway, there was this one fellow—I’m not going to tell you his name—who ran for a state senate seat. Special election, and he beat out five other candidates. Then he won again, with almost two-thirds of the vote. Now, this guy didn’t get elected on account of his good looks, or because he was a great campaigner. Hell, he wasn’t even a good campaigner. But he had me, and I got him to Columbia.”

“The man behind the scenes pulling the strings,” Connor said.

“Well, I never looked at myself as a puppet master, but essentially you’re right. Some of these assholes who run for office don’t know squat about shooting their mouths off, or keeping their peckers in their pants. But that’s not the end of the story. You see, this guy—a two-term senator—got a little power hungry and decided he’d make a good lieutenant governor. Which, as everyone in this state will tell you, is just one small step away from the top job. He had experienced people in place, and enough money to make a good run at it. Plus he was ahead in the polls right up to a week before the primary, and then—wham! He was blindsided.”

Connor was worried Byram Higgins might be experiencing another aneurism. His skin had grown pale and his left hand—the good one—was now shaking almost violently on the arm rest of the wheelchair. But he let the man continue, because he knew he had about four minutes to go, and daughter Adrienne was sure to appear right on schedule.

“All of a sudden a story hit the news cycle about how Mr. Senator had used money from an escrow account at his law firm to pay off gambling debts.”

“And these rumors were lies, I assume?” Connor asked.

“There was no evidence at all, no witnesses who would talk on the record,” Higgins replied. “Just ‘he said,’ ‘she said’ bullshit that mysteriously went away the day after he lost. Nothing more than a Goddamned whisper campaign.”

“And Colt Lomax ties in to all this how?” Connor asked, bringing him back around to the reason he was there.

“He ties in because Mr. Senator wouldn’t support a bill that would relax the regulations covering the processing of waste from poultry farms. Lomax was just cutting his teeth on strong-arming elected officials, and he’d offered a comfortable cash infusion to the campaign. Under the table, all hush-hush. When my guy declined, Colt threatened to have him thrown off the committee that was considering the bill. Didn’t budge an inch, and five days later the article ran in the paper. His opponent went on to win the election, and the following spring South Carolina got a new law that allowed raw chicken sludge to be dumped into open holding ponds no matter how close they were to rivers or homes.”

“Empires are built upon the backs of the people you defeat on your way to the top,” Connor pointed out.

“Precisely, and Lomax is more twisted and evil than Mephistopheles on his darkest day,” Higgins agreed. “Capable of anything if he believes he’s been crossed.”

“Extortion and corruption?”

“Without a doubt.”

“What about murder?” Connor asked.

Again, Higgins seemed to give considerable thought to the question before answering. “Let me put it this way,” he finally said. “Six weeks after my senator lost, he and his wife were driving home from a Christmas concert in Columbia. A car ran them off the road and both of them were killed. Left behind a son and a daughter, who had to be raised by grandparents.”

“And the driver of the other car?”

“Never caught,” Higgins said. “And I’ll just leave it at that.”