The river began to narrow.
Houses remained on the east side, but marsh appeared to the west, with only a few residences scattered at its far edges toward higher ground. The river’s wide-open expanse was gone, the width here more like a canal, the banks tight. Coleen still had a solid half-mile lead, but I had her in my sights. This wasn’t so much a chase. More a following. At some point she’d run out of either water or gas.
She veered left.
Now heading due west.
I kept pace, entering some sort of human-made canal. I knew that south Florida was littered with them. A way to divert fresh water inland where it was needed for agriculture and helped with coastal flooding. We passed under a pair of bridges for a highway. Had to be the Florida turnpike. Then, a couple of miles later, another pair of viaducts streaked with speeding cars. Interstate 95. We were heading inland. Subdivisions of single-family homes gave way to flat farmland, stretching as far as the eye could see. Here the canal fed off into a multitude of non-navigable irrigation channels. This was a path to nowhere, and I saw that Coleen realized that, too. She stopped, then leaped from the boat to shore, the waterproof case in hand. I motored up, killed the engine, and jumped onto the low grassy bank. She was waiting for me, her forehead twisted into a scowl and bathed in a light sheen of sweat. She sat on the ground, knees to her chest, rubbing her arms as if she were cold.
“Dammit, Malone. I have as much right to read this stuff as you do. More so, maybe.”
We were alone. Nothing but cleared land in every direction, the grass beneath us close-clipped and damp with dew.
“Can’t you just go away,” she asked me. “Can’t you just let me take these files and leave? This isn’t your fight. It doesn’t concern you.”
I heard the anger and frustration and stayed quiet, letting her vent.
“You don’t get it,” she spit out. “I admire my father more than any man alive. He’s been there for me every day of my life. He taught me about right and wrong, good and evil. He showed me how to live. But the one thing he’s never spoken about was that day in Memphis. Never. Not once.”
I knew the rest. “Until recently.”
She nodded.
“And I could tell that he was holding back. He dodged my questions and avoided answers. He finally got angry and went silent. So when Valdez called and wanted to make a deal, one he’d refused, I decided that was my chance. I went behind him and set up the meeting in the Dry Tortugas.”
“Why there?”
“Valdez made the choice, and I wasn’t in a position to argue.”
“There’s more happening here than just you and your father,” I pointed out. “There’s some kind of current corruption going on inside the FBI. What’s happening to us is bringing that to light. That’s why I’m here.”
“I don’t give a damn about the FBI. They can all go to hell. I want to know what happened to Martin Luther King Jr. and what my father has to do with it.”
I suddenly realized something. “You can’t discuss this with your husband, can you?”
“To a point. For Nate this is about changing history. Like me, he came along long after King was dead. We grew up in a different world. It’s not perfect by any means, but it’s not the 1960s, either. Nate’s a good man. Don’t get me wrong. He loves me. But he’s a fourth-year associate in a law firm with a long way to go before he’s a partner. He’s got a black woman for a wife, which shouldn’t matter. But we all know it still does. He volunteered to work with the King family in the Memphis civil trial. My dad made that happen. He’s still close with the family. But Nate was more errand boy than lawyer. He thinks my father knows things, and he wants to be the one to discover them. He wants to change history. Make a name for himself. But this isn’t about him. It’s about me and my father. So no, I can’t discuss this with him.”
“So I got nominated?”
She looked up and for the first time smiled. “Something like that. You seem to be my only choice.”
Exactly what her father had said to me.
“I never thought all this would happen,” she said. “I had no idea. I was going to trade the coin for the files and pick Valdez’s brain. Simple as that. But after I found that coin in his drawer, I did some research and learned all about it.”
“I imagine that was a shocker.”
“To say the least. Which created even more questions I knew my father wasn’t going to answer.”
“So you opted to give Valdez a try?”
“It seemed like my only play.”
I walked closer and crouched down before her. Her anger seemed to have passed. She appeared more defeated now.
“Have you heard from Nate?”
She shook her head. “He hasn’t called, which is troublesome.”
“I read every page of the files last night,” I told her.
Her eyes burned into mine. I knew what she wanted to hear.
“It does change history. If it’s real.”
“I want to read it all, too.”
I would eventually come to learn that there were moments in every intelligence operation when only one course was available. Blind risk. A point when you had to place your trust in something that would otherwise be senseless and hope for the best. In later years I both lived for and feared those moments. But right now I needed an ally, not an enemy. And Lincoln was right. Do I not destroy my enemy when I make them my friend?
“Okay,” I said. “You can read it all. But we still have to establish that what’s inside this case is real, and not something Valdez manufactured.”
“How do we do that?”
“I have an idea. But I need your help to make it happen.”
Chapter Thirty
I listened as Coleen used Nate’s cell phone to call Orlando and the Orange County Sheriff’s Department. Back in the cemetery at Port Mayaca, when the guy Foster had taken me there to meet drove off, I memorized his Florida license plate. I didn’t know at the time whether the information would be important, but I realized last night that it was now vital.
That guy knew things.
And he was former FBI.
What I needed was a name and address, and now I knew that I couldn’t contact Stephanie Nelle for help. But a sheriff’s deputy? All she had to do was ask one of her friends to run the tag. Cops did it all the time, as did military police. Thankfully, the phone had a signal out here in the middle of farm country, albeit a weak one as the conversation appeared to be cutting in and out with a lot of can you hear me’s.
She ended the call.
“The car belongs to a Bruce Lael. He lives in Melbourne. You gonna tell me who he is?”
“Your father brought him to Port Mayaca.”
And I told her what happened.
“He wanted Lael to lead Jansen straight to us.”
She seemed astonished. “For what?”
“My guess is, when you opened this can of worms, he saw it as the only way to close it. So he calls Lael, who calls Oliver. Then he sends me to get food, with everything in the car. He didn’t want any harm to come to you, and he doesn’t want you reading what’s in that case, so he sent me out to be caught.”
She glanced at the container as if it were a holy relic. “What the hell is in there?”
“Enough to raise some serious questions about who really killed King and why.”
She sat silent on the damp grass and I allowed her a moment with her thoughts. The sun was rising, becoming hotter by the second.
“Melbourne is about two hours north of here,” I said. “When we passed under I-95 a mile or so back I saw there was an exit just beyond the canal. I say we head there and see if we can bum a ride north.”
“We could wait for Nate to call. I’m a little surprised he hasn’t by now.”
I shook my head. “We have to do this without your father. He won’t want us to find this Bruce Lael. No way.”
“You still haven’t explained why not.”
Because I didn’t know. None of it made sense. But hell, I’d only been an investigator for all of one day.
“How long have you been a cop?” I asked her.
“Four years.”
“You like it?”