FORTY-SEVEN

I called Mark Terry on the cell phone as I drove back to my apartment. “Progress?” I said.

“The more time I spend on the phone, the slower it gets.”

“Sorry,” I said.

“I’ve got almost all the samples prepared,” he said. “But I’m still calibrating the equipment. It’ll take a while.”

“Keep up the good work.”

I hung up just as I was pulling into my space in the building’s lot.

 

 

In my living room, I dumped the duffel on the ground. What I needed was a phone number for the Chief’s lake house. Once I had that, I could run it through my CD-ROM crisscross directory and find the address.

First I checked the Rolodex, looking for the Chief’s phone number. His secretary had listed a home number and a cell number for the Chief, but there was no third number to indicate a lake house. Next I checked the phone log, a fat book of yellow carbons, looking for messages from his wife. Unfortunately, I wasn’t sure what his wife’s name was.

I had hunted through maybe forty pages and the name Sherri had showed up five or six times. Was that his wife? I wasn’t sure. There wasn’t a phone number listed on any of the messages. By 1:30, I had searched through almost the entire log. I was beginning to feel like the whole thing was futile. I threw the book on the table, went in the bedroom, turned on my computer, logged on to my Internet service, stared at the screen. What good did it do fiddling with the computer if I had nothing to put into it? Garbage in, garbage out, as the old saying goes.

I went back and leafed through the phone log. And, finally, one page before the end of the log, I found what I needed. The message was from Sherri, but underneath the name the chief’s secretary had printed in her neat handwriting, “Call her in Milledgeville.” No number listed.

That had to be it, though. If there was no number listed, that meant it was a place that was familiar to the Chief. Which meant—I hoped—his lake house.

I called information from my cell phone, asked for the phone number for Eustace Diggs, Jr. in Milledgeville, Georgia. I was disappointed when the operator said, “I’m sorry, I have no listing showing for that name.”

I thought for a moment. “What about Sherri Diggs?”

“One moment.”

And then the number came on.

I jumped on the computer, ran the phone number through the crisscross directory site I had access to, and found the listing. Box 216, Rural Route 11, Milledgeville, Georgia.

I called the crime lab. “How’s it coming?”

“The equipment’s on line. I just started cranking out the samples. I’m guessing the results will start coming in around daybreak.”

“That’s four hours!” I said.

“I told you it would take all night.”

“Look, I’ve found the address of his lake house,” I said. “Maybe I should head on over there.”

“Where is it?”

“Down in Baldwin County near Milledgeville. Looking at the map, I guess it’s on Lake Sinclair.”

“That’s a hike. What if it turns out it’s not him? You wouldn’t want to be stuck down there and find out it’s somebody else.”

I sighed. I just wanted to act, to do something. “Yeah. I’m going crazy over here, though.”

“I don’t know what to tell you.”

I hung up, logged onto my computer, and used Mapquest to find the location of Chief Diggs’s property in Milledgeville. After that I couldn’t think of anything to do, so I idly fired up my e-mail program. It was mostly a bunch of spam, idiots trying to sell me penny stocks and Viagra. Then one of the e-mails in the list caught my eye. It had a red exclamation next to the sender’s name, a sign that it had been flagged as high priority. But I’d have looked at it in a heartbeat anyway. The sender name line said it all.

Captain Hunger.

I quickly clicked on the message.

The message said: “I know a lot of things now, Mechelle. Not just who you are. I know who HE is. If you keep pursuing this, HE goes in the box next.”

It was signed, “Your old buddy, Captain Hunger.”

I scrolled to the bottom of the message. There on the page was a photo of the Drobysch’s house in Alpharetta. Underneath that, an image of my son. The Drobysches’ son.

Kevin.

I have been trying hard. When he was born, I talked to the Drobysches and I told them, “This is your son.” That’s what I told them and I meant it. Theirs to raise, theirs to cherish, theirs to care for.

But there’s some weird residual hitch deep in the blood that attached me to that child. I know, I know, maybe I should have worked harder to cut the knot. It’s not healthy the way I’d been obsessing about him. And I knew it would fade and diminish over time. Everybody’s brain has a process it goes through when something tragic happens. And giving your child to someone else to raise, make no mistake, that’s a tragic loss, no matter how positive a face you put on it. What made me a crankhead, and what made me a good cop, too, for that matter, was the same obsessive quality that made it so hard for me to let go of Kevin.

But there, staring me in the face, was a final signal of something, a signal that a choice had to be made. Protect Kevin. Protect Jenny Dial. Which would it be? Because I had a hunch there was no way to do both.

I stared at the screen for a while, but to no particular end. The choice had been made the second I saw the picture.

 

 

Alpharetta is normally about a thirty-minute drive from Decatur. I made it in twenty. Given that Atlanta is the fastest-driving city on the planet (this is a fact, you can look it up), that meant I was seriously moving. My poor old Chevy was laboring something awful, but we made it, screeching through the turns in Rosemont Orchards II like some gold-plated NASCAR redneck down at Talladega.

I screeched to a halt in the driveway of the Drobysches’ big house, hopped out of the car, the motor still running, ran up, and banged on the door.

I saw a light come on upstairs. I kept banging. An upstairs window light came on, and a man’s voice came out, nervous but firm. “Mechelle! Is that you? I’m calling the police right now.”

“David, I have to talk to you!”

“I’m calling nine one one.”

“Go ahead. That’s fine. But first go check on Kevin. Make sure he’s okay!” I was screaming my head off. Lights were coming on in other houses. This neck of the woods they weren’t used to people pitching fits in somebody’s lawn at two in the morning.

“I’m sure Kevin’s fine,” David Drobysch yelled to me.

“Please! Go check, goddammit! Somebody’s threatened his life.”

The window slammed shut.

“Daviiiiiid!” It was sad, really. I was screaming like some poor street fool, high on something, paranoid and crazy. Even in my panic I had enough distance to see it from their perspective. Some crazy drug addict was down on their lawn, screaming and cussing. “David, Nancy you have to take him away somewhere! Go somewhere safe! Please David. Please, Nancy. Take him somewhere safe!”

I heard the distant, thready siren drifting through the sticky night air. I knew then that I had failed. I’d failed to convince the Drobysches. I’d failed to protect Jenny Dial. And now I’d failed my own son. Come Sunday they’d take away my badge, probably prosecute me for pointing my gun at Captain Goodwin. And then that would mean the end of my career as a cop.

Looking back, I had another thirty seconds, maybe a minute to convince the Drobysches that I was not crazy. Maybe, possibly, I could have explained to them what was going on, at least convince them that it was worth their while to go visit Mom and Dad back up in Syracuse or wherever they had come from. Maybe I couldn’t save Jenny Dial, but maybe I could have convinced them to save little Kevin, my son. Their son. But I didn’t have the courage. Or, for that matter, the time.

I heard the siren, and I knew I still had time to get out of there, still had time to sneak out of the neighborhood before the local yokels showed up to arrest me for being loud and black in a white suburban neighborhood.

I got back in the car and I drove.