Jonathon King - Shadow Men

It was past midnight when I gently closed the book and took a fresh beer out onto the patio. There was an uncharacteristic chill coming in on the northeast ocean wind. I could hear the surf chopping at the sand, and interrupted moonlight caught on the swells at sea far from the shore. Weather was kicking up. I took another long drink from the bottle and found it difficult to focus on the lights of a ship at sea. Then from behind me I heard my name being called.

"M-Max."

Billy was looking down into the crate when I came in through the sliding doors. Diane was at his side, barely a step behind. Billy was in a tuxedo and black tie, and looked every bit like a version of the most recent Academy Award winner. Diane was in a long gown, an expensive-looking lace shawl still around her shoulders. Billy looked up at me.

"M-Max. What the h-hell is this doing in my home?"

I hesitated only a second. My mind might have been muddled at the moment, but it was made up.

"That, my friend, may be the murder weapon used to kill our Mr. Cyrus Mayes and his family."

I drank coffee after that, standing next to the pot in the kitchen. Diane tasted a glass of chardonnay and Billy drank bottled water as they sat on stools on the other side of the counter going carefully over John William's ledger. Billy had pulled on a pair of thin latex gloves before handling the book and Diane only looked over his shoulder, letting him touch the pages.

I narrated the story of John William Jefferson as it was told to me. They listened, interrupting only for clarification, which lawyers do, and even that happened less and less as the coffee sobered me. When he got to the pages showing the diagram of the trail, Billy spent several minutes staring at the markers.

"Jesus, M-Max," he said.

Billy had come to the same assumption that I had: the possibility of grave markers. X's where bodies where buried or simply left some eighty years ago.

"Yeah. But not enough to get a warrant for all of PalmCo's records pertaining to their part in building the road, is it?"

The two attorneys did not look at each other but both were subtly shaking their heads.

"N-No names. No use of the word 'bodies.' No description of killing or the three hundred dollars b-being the rate for the d- disposal of a human being."

"Any attorney is going to argue that those entries could represent anything from rattlesnakes to bobcats," McIntyre said.

"We could use it as m-more ammunition to get PalmCo to consider a settlement, but that's n-not what Mayes wants. Or anyone else," Billy said, looking at me.

"We still need the bodies," I said.

"Eighty years old?" McIntyre said, not bothering to hide her skepticism.

"Yeah. The bones, teeth, skeletal remains. Hell, even the bullets themselves could still be there. And now we may have the treasure map."

I'd already written down the coordinates from the ledger. Billy could lay them out on a relief map of the Glades in the morning while I made a call to the Loop Road hotel and got a message to Nate Brown. If John William had borrowed the technology of the road surveyors and was meticulous with his markings, we had a chance.

"I also h-have to get this to our d-documents expert for a t-time analysis," Billy said. "Is that going to b-be a problem with your reverend Jefferson?"

"I don't think he even knows it exists," I said. "I doubt he ever even opened the crate. Maybe his father had, but it was like a Pandora's heirloom that they didn't want to destroy but didn't want to acknowledge, either. It was like they were waiting for someone to take it out of their hands."

The statement left us all quiet. Billy had long ago shed his jacket and tie but somehow still looked as sharp as a razor crease. McIntyre was barefooted again and in her concentration had dragged her fingers through her thick dark hair enough times that it left her looking rumpled.

"Tomorrow," Billy finally said, as his hand subtly went to McIntyre's neck and they rose together. He started to turn but stopped. The Winchester Takedown was still on his dining table. No one had even looked at it after we'd started concentrating on the book. Billy's aversion was not political or liberal; it was personal. His past was not without its own flashes of violence and what always comes with it.

"I'll take it down and lock it in my truck," I said quickly.

"OK, M-Max. T-Tomorrow we can put it in p-proper storage. And I'd l-like to get our f-friend Mr. Lott to take a l-look.

They retired to Billy's room. I closed up the crate and went and closed the patio doors. I then snagged two bottles of beer, picked up the crate and carried it down to my truck. I draped a rain jacket over it in the back behind the seats and took out my emergency sleeping bag, then locked up and walked out to the beach.

The wind had died some but the surf was still kicked up. The lights from the shorefront buildings caught the white foam of the breakers and illuminated them as they rolled and tumbled and eventually died on the sand. I walked up into the breeze. I could feel the moisture of the salt air on my arms and hands. When I found a swatch of dark beach where the building light was blocked by a partial dune, I sat in the sand and wrapped the sleeping bag around my legs and opened the first beer. I took a sip and stared out at the eastern horizon, thought of what John William may have left behind, and waited for the glow of sunrise.

The next day I showered and shaved upstairs while Billy made one of his gourmet breakfasts. The weak nor'easter had blown itself out overnight. The ocean had begun to flatten out and the partial cloud cover had been replaced by a hot clear sky that was difficult to look up into for too long without hurting one's eyes.

When I came back up well after seven, Billy and McIntyre were on the patio drinking coffee and absorbing sections of The Wall Street Journal. By the time I'd cleaned up, Diane had gone off to court.

"The girl's a workaholic," I said to Billy as I sat down with coffee in the patio chair she had abandoned. He was still in the kitchen, on the other side of the threshold.

"She's seriously considering a run for a judgeship in next year's elections. I think she's testing her stamina," he said, the physical barrier removing his stutter.

"She's tough enough, and sure as hell smart enough," I said.

"Yes," he said, coming out to place plates of hard scrambled eggs with scallions and diced red peppers and sides of homemade salsa on the table.

"So, is there a concern?" I said, reading the tone of his voice.

"It's an elected p-position. Which m-means it's political by nature."

"Yeah?"

"I'm n-not sure the South left in South Florida will accept a woman c-candidate who is carrying on a long-term, interracial relationship."

It was not an area that Billy brought into conversation often. He had been able to overwhelm any overt racism in his own life by the strength of his intelligence and ability to command a great respect for his services. His business sense and knowledge of the markets had also made him wealthy, and the economic world of dollars and cents was truly color-blind. He did not give a damn about racism directed toward him. If confronted, he turned his back on it; the loss wouldn't be his. But when it showed against others less powerful, he seethed because he knew it was not just about him.

"Don't tell me she's deciding between you and the judgeship," I said.

"N-No. She says fuck them," he answered, and the curse word sounded alien coming from his mouth.

"So what's the problem?"

He waited, squinting out into the sun and taking a long sip of hot coffee without wincing.

"I m-may ask her to m-marry me, Max."

I followed Billy to his downtown office, where we locked John William's rifle away in a vault where he kept a variety of items for his clients cases. Billy alone knew the combination, and it kept his anxieties in check. The next day I would take it down to Lott's forensics lab and let the expert take a look.