An hour later, they landed in Sarasota. Gunther had called ahead for a cab, and Lacy handed Carlita enough money to get to her place in Tampa. Lacy thanked her and hugged her and said good-bye, knowing she would never see her again.
Back in the air, with Gunther occupied with flying, Lacy opened the courier bag. She pulled out Myers’s thin laptop and turned it on, but was stopped at the pass code. She found a prepaid cell phone and some files. One contained the boat’s registration, to a company in the Bahamas, along with warranties, operating procedures, and a thick stack of fine print about insurance. Another file was filled with old cases involving corrupt judges. Lacy found not a single word about McDover, the Tappacola, Cooley, the mole, or herself. The backpack was just as clean; nothing but old research and newspaper clippings about Ramsey Mix, a.k.a. Greg Myers. Evidently, he kept the current materials somewhere onshore, at least the written ones. She suspected his laptop was loaded with evidence that could have been devastating in the wrong hands.
When they landed in Tallahassee, Lacy was hoping Gunther might simply stay on the plane and continue back to Atlanta. Apparently, that never crossed his mind. As they drove to her apartment, it became clear that Gunther now considered himself an active member of the BJC investigative team. He planned to stay a few more days, to keep an eye on his sister.
Lacy called Geismar again with a full update. They agreed to meet early Monday morning. Late in the afternoon, as Gunther paced around her terrace calling one partner or lawyer or accountant or banker after another, Lacy was returning e-mails when she got a surprise from Allie Pacheco. His text was simply “Got time for a drink?”
She responded, “Unofficial, after hours, no business?”
He replied, “Of course.”
But business was exactly what she had in mind. She invited him to her apartment, warned him that her brother was there and that things would not be that private.
Pacheco arrived in shorts and a polo at 7:30. Lacy poured him a beer and introduced him to Gunther, who wanted to grill him. The unofficial status of the little rendezvous lasted for about five minutes, until Gunther blurted, “We gotta talk about Myers.”
Pacheco put down his glass, looked at Lacy, and asked, “Okay, what’s up with Myers?”
“He’s been missing for five days,” she said. “That’s his laptop on the counter. We got it off his boat this morning in Key Largo.”
“It’s a long story,” Gunther said.
Pacheco stared at both of them. He raised both hands, showed them his palms, said, “This is way off-limits, okay? Tell me all you can tell me, then I’ll decide what to do with it.”
Gunther was remarkably quiet as Lacy told the story.
—
Sipping his second beer, Pacheco finally said, “The boat needs to be secured, and to do that the police need to be notified. There’s no federal issue here, not yet anyway, so we can’t do it.”
“But you can notify the police, right?” Lacy asked. “I’d rather not make the call, because then I would have to answer a lot of questions. I’d rather not have my name attached to a missing person case.”
“You’re already attached to it because you have his laptop and files.”
“But they have nothing to do with his disappearance.”
“You don’t know that. You don’t know what’s in the laptop. There may be a trail there, some reference to a meeting the day he disappeared.”
“Great,” Gunther said. “We’ll give it to you, everything, and you give it to the police. They’ll take things far more seriously if they’re notified by the FBI.”
“That might work,” Pacheco said. “Is there a chance Myers simply walked away? Given his past, and his present, that’s not completely far-fetched.”
Lacy said, “Sure, I’ve thought about it. Maybe something frightened him. Maybe he got tired of the boat, or the woman, or both, and decided to vanish. He was at least thinking about dropping the complaint. When he came here to my apartment, he offered to drop it and walk away. He was sorry about Hugo, blamed himself, and said he wished he’d never started all this. He could have ditched the records, scrubbed his computer, and hit the road.”
“You don’t believe that,” Gunther said.
“No, I don’t. I’ve had this conversation with Cooley, and he’ll never be convinced that Myers would run and hide again. Myers needs the money. He’s an ex-con who’s sixty years old and without much of a future. He was banking on a huge windfall from the whistle-blower statute. He knew that law inside and out and was already counting his money. He believed McDover and Dubose have stolen tens of millions and that a lot of the money can be recovered. I don’t know how he paid for the boat but he was very proud of it. He loved island hopping and puttering around the Keys. He was a happy guy about to strike it rich. So, no, I don’t think he walked away.”
Pacheco said, “Well, the disappearance is now five days old and the investigation has not even started. That makes for an awfully cold trail.”