The wind had become a living thing.
Heading across the high bluffs above Wiggins Point, I could barely keep the truck on the road against the sustained winds. Captain Morgo called me on the radio as I descended into the protection of the tree line that bordered the town.
“Anything new at your end?” she asked.
If I had possessed the energy, I would have laughed out loud.
I had already decided not to tell her about Sal Scalise. If I reported his death, Jim Dickey’s investigators would have had me jumping through hoops for the rest of the day, if not longer. And time was running out.
If I stopped now, Jordan was finished at St. Andrews. And so was I, for that matter. Unless the cabin floated away, Sal wouldn’t be going anywhere. And I was carrying his cell phone with the saved messages. I knew I could reconstruct what had happened when the time came. If things turned out all right, I could sleep for a week.
Captain Morgo had news for me.
“Ken found Creighton Taylor’s old case file and was able to track down his college application documents in the college archives,” she said.
“How did he die?” I asked. “It wasn’t in the newspaper.”
“He was found hanging from the suspension footbridge by a length of braided rope,” she said.
“Multicolored, correct?”
“Yes,” she confirmed, adding, “and his blood-alcohol level was incredibly high . . . point three seven.”
“Anything else?”
“One odd thing. His right hand was inside the noose around his neck.”
I could see it all in my mind.
“You also asked about his parents. As of June fifteenth, 1986, his mother was living in Fort Campbell, Kentucky. His father is listed on his college application as a major in the United States Army.”
“Can you give me the father’s full name?” I asked.
“Francis Marion Taylor. His home address is listed as Charlotte, South Carolina.”
Francis Marion. The Swamp Fox of the Revolutionary War was from South Carolina, and he had been an incredible warrior. Along with ten thousand other Carolinians, Creighton Taylor’s father had probably been named after him.
It was finally beginning to make sense. I asked Captain Morgo to make a call to the Pentagon and try to track down a lieutenant colonel named Mike Andrews who worked in operations planning.
“Will do,” she said and cut the connection.
Less than ten minutes later, the office dispatcher patched me through to Andrews in Washington. By then, I was sitting in the middle of Triphammer Road, stopped in front of a downed tree that blocked the only route across the gorge onto the campus. Thankfully, the cell connection was still working.
“So what’s the weather like up there in the boondocks?” asked Andrews. “You marooned at home in front of the fire with that feral white wolf?”
“I need a favor, Mike.”
“Oh, shit,” he came right back. “Here it comes again.”
We had served together in Afghanistan. I hadn’t saved his life. He hadn’t saved mine. But we had hated the same brass idiots, and we had gotten drunk together over the time we fought there. And he knew I had gotten the shaft.
“I need everything you can find out pronto about an army officer named Francis Marion Taylor. He was a major in 1986 and probably served at some point with the 101st Airborne at Fort Campbell.”
“You know how many goddamn Taylors have served in the army from old Zachary to Maxwell Taylor,” he groaned. “Maybe fifty thousand.”
“That’s why I called you. He was probably born in South Carolina.”
“Thanks a pantload. All right. Give me a couple weeks and I’ll get back to you.”
“You’ve got an hour. Call me back at the dispatcher’s number and they’ll patch me through . . . Mike . . . it could be life or death.”
“Your life?”
“You never know.”
“I’ll do my best, Jake,” he said, signing off.
Francis Marion Taylor. I was wondering where he might be at that moment when an emergency vehicle pulled up alongside me, and three men began removing cutting equipment from the freight bed.
I backed the Chevy to the side of the road and parked. While rain continued to pound the windshield, the emergency crew went to work on the tree. I fell asleep to the seductive whine of chainsaws dismantling the trunk.
Something slammed into the rear of the cab, bringing me up from the blackness. The Percodan had put me out. I blearily checked my watch. I had slept for about twenty minutes.
By now, the wind and rain should have moderated further unless the hurricane had slowed down or stopped in its path. I didn’t see any hint of the storm abating. The sky was still dark as I started the truck up again. Through the windshield, I saw that the emergency crew had finished its work and moved on.
I needed to find Evelyn Wheatley. The last I had heard, she was riding out the storm at Tau Epsilon Rho with Mrs. Palmer. Swinging the Chevy around, I turned on the headlights again and headed over there.