I stood there with my hands cuffed behind my back. The blank sheets of paper I’d used as a decoy were scattered everywhere. The piece of rebar that had bruised my thigh was still there, too. Foster was saying nothing. He just looked dazed, staring down at the ground.
“Valdez is dead,” I said to him.
The older man looked up and nodded.
I wanted him to know that justice had been done. An eye for an eye and all that crap. But Coleen was still gone. I wondered if the sorrow etched deep into his face would ever lessen. It already seemed permanent, the enormity of what had been set in motion thirty-two years ago had come to fruition here, amid the laughter and gaiety of what some called the happiest place on earth.
But only sorrow filled the night air.
Stephanie Nelle appeared with an older man in uniform, a bunch of gold stars on his collar. A pin at his left breast identified him as the Orange County sheriff.
“Uncuff him,” Stephanie said.
The sheriff nodded to one of his deputies and my restraints were freed. She motioned for us to walk off to the far side.
“You okay?” she asked.
I nodded. “How did you find me?”
“It wasn’t hard. Just follow the bodies. The FBI is not happy. The attorney general is not happy. Tell me something that can change all that.”
I actually had a mouthful, but I needed to speak with Foster first.
I walked over to him.
Stephanie came with me. The sheriff stayed with his people.
“Reverend Foster,” she said. “I’m so sorry for your loss.”
The older man said nothing.
Deputies scurried about working the crime scene.
“She was a good police officer,” Foster said.
“I’ve explained all that I can to the sheriff,” she said, “and invoked federal jurisdiction. I told him the three of you were working with the Justice Department on a special assignment.”
“I would rather you not say that,” Foster muttered. “I prefer to have nothing to do with the government.”
“Would you rather go to jail?” she asked. “Five people died here tonight.”
He glared at her. “I only care about two of those deaths. My daughter and her husband are gone.”
I heard what he hadn’t said.
That he was to blame.
“What’s all the blank paper scattered around?” she asked.
“A bluff that didn’t work,” I said.
“Do you still have the files?” she asked.
This was the moment. Did I tell her the truth? Yes, I knew enough to set history on its head, but Foster had just suffered a horrific personal loss. Did I compound that by implicating him in the murder of Martin Luther King Jr.? No statute of limitations existed on that crime. He could still be prosecuted and face jail. Between the files and the cassette tape, the proof of his involvement was beyond a reasonable doubt. Ultimately, my career in the intelligence business would show that I had a great ability to hold things close. Secrets became second nature for me. People trusted me. And I never let one of them down. But here, amid the surreal gaiety of the Magic Kingdom and the horror of Coleen and Nate’s death, I was confronted for the first time with that dilemma.
Talk?
Or not?
“Valdez didn’t fall for it,” I said. “I had to hand the files over. One of his men took them away just before he shot Coleen.”
Foster did not react to my lie, but something told me he appreciated the temporary deflection. I wanted the opportunity to talk with him privately before I leveled with Stephanie.
“And the coin?” she asked.
I reached into my front pocket and produced it. The small reel of tape was in my back pocket, out of sight to her, and there it would remain.
“Do you plan to explain what happened here?” she asked me, taking the coin.
I nodded. “But not tonight. Let’s do this tomorrow or the next day.”
“It doesn’t work like that, Cotton.”
“It does for me.”
Foster seemed near tears.
Deputies were finishing photographing Coleen’s now uncovered body. No father should have to watch that. He should leave, but I realized that wasn’t going to happen. This man had helped kill Martin Luther King Jr. What it had taken for him to live with that wrong for the past three decades I could only imagine. Now he would have to live with the fact that his daughter and son-in-law were dead, too.
And he was certainly at least partially responsible.
“Reverend Foster, one of the deputies will take you home,” Stephanie said. “I’ll be by to see you in a few days.”
“Don’t waste your time,” he said, the voice filled with sorrow. “I’ll have nothing to say.”
His gaze met mine and I could read his thoughts, as clear as if he’d spoken the words out loud.
He and I were a different story.
We did need to speak.
“Do you need a ride?” Stephanie asked me.
I shook my head and found the keys in my pocket.
“I have a truck.”
Chapter Fifty-six
Coleen and Nate were buried three days later, a little before noon on an endless, dragging, dreadful day. The funerals were held at her father’s modest church in Orlando, a small, bricked, single-nave building with a pointed bell tower. Every pew was filled with mourners, the sheriff’s department honoring one of their own with a color guard and a uniformed escort to the cemetery. The sheriff himself spoke. Foster did not officiate. Instead, he sat on the front pew, silent and solemn, a prone figure communing with himself.
I’d returned home from Disneyland in Lael’s truck. Its presence raised questions with Pam, and I explained that I inherited it from someone who no longer had any use for it. She asked about what I’d been doing, but I deflected the questions, telling her I wish I could tell her but I couldn’t. Official Navy business. She actually seemed okay with the explanation, and a lovely dinner at a local seafood restaurant helped ease any of her lingering fears.
I would give anything not to have hurt her.
Thoughts of Coleen and Nate stayed in my mind. Along with the fact that three other men had died. Two I helped, the other I killed myself. Of course, not a word of any of that could be uttered to anyone. I was only beginning to understand that being an intelligence officer was a lonely profession. Little to no recognition ever came from anything you did, good or bad. The job was only about results.
Nothing else mattered.
I returned to work at Naval Station Mayport and, amazingly, my CO acted like nothing had ever happened. Perhaps it was the fact that the Justice Department had specifically recruited my services. That had the smell of some captain’s or admiral’s touch, and the one thing my CO could sniff out at five hundred yards in the middle of a hurricane was the sweet waft of command. All my past transgressions seemed to have been forgiven. I resumed my job as a staff attorney and it didn’t take long for me to realize that there was no comparison between that and what I’d done for the past few days.
On the way back from Orlando I’d stopped in Gainesville and retrieved Valdez’s file photos from the Mail ’N More. The cassette tape had remained safe inside the truck’s player. Both items, along with the reel tape from Oliver, were now resting in the lower right drawer of my desk at work. Nobody had a clue I possessed them, which to me seemed the best protection. What to do with them was still up in the air. My assignment called for me to turn them over to Stephanie Nelle.
But I had to speak with Foster.
So I took a personal leave day and drove to Orlando for the funeral.
Another lie to Pam quelled any questions she might have had.
Follow-up to what I just did.
I’ll be home by nightfall.