The Bullet (20 page)

I bit back a smile. Say what you would about the woman's journalistic ethics, she was clever. I carried the box through to my kitchen. Lifted the lid. Bacon quiche. Still warm.

You are not supposed to accept food from strangers. That must be one of the earliest lessons that my mother—hell, probably both my mothers—had drummed into me. But they also taught me to trust my instincts. Right now mine were telling me that Alex James wanted to ­interview me, not poison me.

I opened a drawer and pulled out a fork.

•   •   •

I HAD POWERED
my way through two slices of quiche and was eyeing a third when the doorbell rang again.

What now?

It was a tiny skeleton. In plump hands it clutched a hollow, plastic pumpkin. “Trick or treat?”

I had forgotten it was Halloween. Bizarre holiday. Dressing children up as witches and vampires, telling them stories about monsters and ghosts. As if real life didn't pack enough nasty surprises.

Forty-one

FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 1, 2013

F
or many years, if you wanted to make a phone call in Atlanta, you were routed through the switchboards of Southern Bell.

In the early days, the 1880s, the only long-distance call you could place was from Atlanta to Decatur, six whole miles away. That would set you back fifteen cents for a five-minute chat. It was 1915 before the first transcontinental call, voices dancing from the East Coast to the West across thousands of miles of suspended copper wire; 1951 before you were allowed to dial long distance without the assistance of an operator; 1956 before the first transatlantic phone cable was laid. Southern Bell thrived through the changes, survived a dizzying number of mergers and spin-offs and splits, until the company name was finally retired in 1998.

I mention all this by way of backdrop. Backdrop to what, for our purposes, is by far the most interesting date in Southern Bell's corporate history: March 25, 1971. That's when a Mr. Verlin Snow walked through the doors. He was hired as a senior vice president, poached from a Boston bank, forty-five years old. Technically he was brought in to oversee the completion of the transition to touch-tone phones. They'd been available to subscribers since the early sixties, but folks seemed slow to catch on. But Snow's real talent was as a rainmaker. He possessed an exceptional knack for greasing political connections to in
crease profits. A columnist for the
Atlanta Business Chronicle
noted that most weekdays you could watch him in action at the Coach and Six, the Peachtree Street power-lunch spot favored by the city's old guard. Verlin Snow stood out, the columnist added with a trace of suspicion, not only for his Yankee accent but for his puritanical habits. Snow conducted business stone-cold sober, in a town where men were disposed toward downing a second martini before the food arrived.

Sometime in the late 1970s, though, he had gotten into trouble. He had hired a young lawyer by the name of Ethan Sinclare, a rising star in one of Atlanta's white-shoe firms. I couldn't tell quite what kind of trouble Snow was in. Beamer Beasley didn't seem to know either, and whatever it was, Sinclare appeared to have earned his fee and succeeded at making it disappear. A
Forbes
magazine profile of Snow in 1981 (“The Man Who Killed Off the Rotary Phone”)
alluded only to an extended leave of absence, taken at his summer home on Nantucket, from which Snow had returned to work energized and more bullish than ever.

What Beasley did know was that late in 1979, when Sinclare was questioned about the murders of Boone and Sadie Rawson Smith, he had had an impeccable alibi. He had been locked in a conference room at his downtown office, conferring with his client Verlin Snow. Snow confirmed this when police followed up. Yes, he was absolutely certain about the date and hours in question. No, Sinclare could not have slipped out for any length of time. Lawyer and client had been hunkered over stacks of documents, heads bowed together, the entire ­afternoon. Snow was a pillar of the business community, a member of the right country club, on the executive committee of the Commerce Club. His word was gold.

I was able to piece together most of Verlin Snow's background from my kitchen table. Astonishing what you can accomplish these days, armed with a laptop and a fast Internet connection. But the press clippings petered out after his retirement in the early nineties. He was quoted a few times, trotted out for expert analysis, in news stories covering various telecom antitrust lawsuits. The last reference I could find
was from 1997—sixteen years ago—when the student newspaper for Northwestern University mentioned that Snow would be guest-­lecturing at the Kellogg Graduate School of Management.

I couldn't tell where he might be now.

I couldn't tell if he'd kept in touch with Ethan Sinclare, or if he knew anything that might help me.

I couldn't even tell if Verlin Snow was still alive.

•   •   •

IT CAME TO
me when I stood to put the kettle on and warm the last piece of bacon quiche in the microwave.

Snow's summerhouse. Nantucket.

Finding him turned out to be easy. On my laptop an address and a phone number for a V. R. Snow in Nantucket, Massachusetts, popped right up. When I dialed, no one answered. I speared a bite of quiche, chewed, and tried again. Let it ring seven times. Eight. Nine.

“Hello?” said a surprised-sounding voice, the way one would answer a phone that rarely rang.

“Hi, I'm calling from Washington. Trying to reach a Mr. Verlin Snow. Do I have the right number?”

A longish pause. “Yes,” said the voice, still surprised. A woman.

“This is Caroline Cashion. May I speak to him please?”

“But he can't speak on the phone,” she said, now indignant, as if this were an obvious point that I had stubbornly been resisting. Her accent was Caribbean, possibly Jamaican.

“Um, you mean not right now? Might he be available later?”

“No. Mr. Snow's not well. What did you say your name was?”

“Sorry. Let me back up. My name is Caroline. I was hoping to come see Mr. Snow”—I was surprised to hear my voice forming these words—“maybe tomorrow.”

“Oh, no, no, no” came the reply, now stern. “I wouldn't think so. He doesn't see visitors anymore.” Her voice dropped to a whisper. “He's an invalid. Do you not know? Cancer of the throat.”

I had done the math before I called. Verlin Snow would be eighty-seven years old. I dropped my voice to match hers. “Can he still hear well enough? He can understand questions? Yes? . . . Okay, tell him something for me. Tell him Caroline Cashion is on the phone. When I was a girl, my name was Caroline Smith. Tell him it's regarding a lawyer from Atlanta, named Ethan Sinclare. About time they spent together in November 1979.”

The woman was gone a good five minutes. I could hear pipes running in the background, and the barking of a distant dog. When she came back on the line, she said simply, “He'll see you. He's best in the afternoons.”

•   •   •

THERE ARE NO
direct flights from Washington to Nantucket, not in the off-season.

I would have to fly through Boston, connecting onto a ten-seat puddle jumper flown by Cape Air. Still, if I left early tomorrow, I could be on the island by 11:00 a.m., New England weather permitting. I reached up to finger the stitches on my neck as I clicked around travel websites. Dr. Gellert would kill me if he knew what I was contemplating. Beamer Beasley would, too, for a completely different set of reasons.

Booking flights on small planes—booking any travel at all—a mere seven days after emergency surgery was stupid, I had to admit. But as I hesitated, I noticed that I was holding the computer mouse in my right hand. I had not been able to do that for the past year. I'd made the switch back without even realizing it.

Something else felt different, too. I think I've mentioned that I'm not known for rash decisions, am not a taker of spur-of-the-moment trips. Yet here I sat, about to buy a ticket for a plane that left in eleven hours, to fly to an island that I'd never seen, to meet a stranger. I should have felt nervous, but instead, I felt invigorated. Sometime in the chaos of these last few weeks, I appeared to have developed a taste for recklessness.

I hovered my hand—my right hand—above the mouse. Then I swooped down and clicked on the box that said
PURCHASE
.

•   •   •

MY MOBILE BUZZED
as I brushed my teeth before bed. I picked right up. One of my post-Will resolutions was to be more vigilant about answering my phone. Another was not to fall for any man who listened to country or wore boot-cut jeans. Also, never again to accept a date that involved baseball (although in fairness, I might have arrived at that particular fatwa even if Will Zartman had turned out to be a good guy).

“Everything okay? You safe?” It was Beamer Beasley.

“Yes.” I spat toothpaste into the sink. “Why?”

“Good. In for the night? Alarm on, doors locked?”

“Beamer. What's going on?”

“Just checking. Just that I can't, uh, at this exact moment, I can't locate Ethan Sinclare.”

I laid the floss back beside the sink and plopped down on the edge of the bathtub. “What do you mean, you can't locate him? I thought he was up at that lake. Lake Burton.”

“Well, that's it. I drove up there yesterday, like I said I would. For a number of reasons, but frankly, the main one was I thought it might put your mind at ease. Figured I could talk to him, let him explain some of the . . . inconsistencies I know have been troubling you. But he wasn't there. I talked to his wife—”

“Betsy.”

“That's right. A nice lady.”

“So she was at the cabin?”

“Yes. Actually, cabin, my rear end,” snorted Beasley. “It's not a cabin, it's a compound they've got up there. Boathouse with room for two motorboats, a sailboat, a couple canoes, you name it. Plus a hundred yards of private shoreline, even a barn so Mrs. Sinclare can ride her horses. Anyway, she was real polite. But she said I'd missed him again. Mr. Sinclare had to drive back into town to take care of some business.
She said he'd be at his office. But he never turned up at the law firm today, and nobody's home at their house in Buckhead either. His cell phone's turned off. If I were the worrying type, I'd be starting to worry that he's avoiding me.”

I could think of half a dozen places where Ethan Sinclare might be, none of them necessarily sinister. His tennis club. A friend's house. The movies. Maybe he had a woman on the side that Betsy didn't know about. If Cheral was to be believed, he hadn't been a stickler for fidelity thirty-five years ago; who knew if the leopard had changed its spots?

“Thanks for letting me know.”

“I'll keep trying,” said Beasley. “He'll turn up. We'll get this all straightened out. Are DC police still driving by your house every night?”

“No.” I frowned. “Not since last week. Not since my surgery. I mean, the bullet's gone. There's no reason anyone would feel threatened by me anymore, right?”

“Speaking of that. The bullet. That was the other thing I called to tell you. They can't do anything with it.”

“Nothing at all?” My voice rose in dismay.

“Not here in Atlanta. They did identify the caliber. It's a .38 Special. Full metal jacket, which explains why the bullet passed through your mama's body and on to you. So the firearm in question would have been a revolver, I'm guessing maybe a Smith and Wesson .38 Special. That's what we all used to carry. Standard service cartridge for police departments, for many years.”

“Jesus!” I shrieked. “You don't mean the police were involv—”

“No, no, that's not what I meant. Cops carried them, but so did plenty of other folks. They're good guns, work well for everything from personal defense to target practice to popping off rabbits in your backyard. People still buy 'em. The trouble is . . .” Beasley sighed. “Ms. Cashion, the trouble is your bullet from your neck isn't in good enough condition to make a comparison. It's scored in several places. Scratched
up. Maybe from back when it was fired, maybe from where the surgeon used tweezers to tug at it, to get it out.”

I felt as though I'd been punched in the stomach.

“We're shipping it up to Virginia, to the FBI. They've got a hundred times the manpower and expertise we do.”

“The FBI? The FBI is going to examine my bullet?” I repeated incredulously.

“Best crime lab in the country. Out in Quantico. Literally hundreds of firearms specialists, ammo specialists, forensic techs, special agents, you name it.”

“Did you send the FBI the evidence bullets, too? The sample ones that you all kept from 1979?”

“Yes, of course. That's the whole point.”

“Were any of them .38 caliber?”

“Listen, let's cross that bridge when we get there, okay? I've already bent the rules, telling you this much.”

“But, Beamer—”

“Ms. Cashion, I'm hanging up now. We should hear back from Quantico by early next week.”

After that I tried to sleep, but every few minutes some noise snapped me awake. A shutter on my neighbor's house was loose and banging in the wind. Somewhere farther up the block a car alarm went off. When an owl hooted outside my window, shortly after 2:00 a.m., I nearly jumped out of my skin. I checked the settings on the burglar alarm, checked the dead bolt on my bedroom door, then got dressed and waited until it was time to call a taxi for the airport.

PART FOUR

Nantucket

Forty-two

SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 2, 2013

V
erlin Snow's house was big and square and built of weathered, gray clapboard. But then, from what I could see through the rain-streaked windows of the airport taxi, all the houses on Nantucket were built of weathered gray clapboard. I had never seen such uniform architecture. My initial impressions of the island were of billowing fog and gusting wind, the air split by the shriek of seagulls and sharp with the tang of brine.

There was also the smell of money. The streets were swept, the gardens tended, wet roses curling over freshly painted picket fences, even in November. I endured the drive from the airport with gritted teeth, one hand pressed to the back of my bruised neck, the other braced against the car door. This morning's back-to-back flights had been smooth; I had wrapped a soft, thick shawl around my shoulders and slept the whole way. But Nantucket's uneven cobblestone streets were torture. The taxi jounced and splashed through puddles, past coffee shops, an old-fashioned pharmacy, a bank, a pretty church. Half the shops looked closed for winter. The sidewalks were deserted.

The Snow house sat near the center of what appeared to be the biggest town on the island, known, with typical New England austerity, simply as Town. After a couple of blocks, the storefronts on Main Street gave way to great mansions, the former homes of sea captains and whal
ing merchants. Seagulls aside, Nantucket's Main Street bore a remarkable resemblance to the swankier blocks of Georgetown.

“Here we go,” said the driver, drawing up near the corner of Main and Milk Streets. Gas lanterns burned on either side of three stone steps and an imposing front door. The brass knocker and letter slot gleamed. I pulled a box of Advil out of my handbag, popped three pills, knocked, and waited.

When the door swung open, the scene was more or less as I had imagined. A dimly lit foyer, fussily furnished but clean. Old rugs, old Audubon bird prints, faded wallpaper, a grandfather clock that looked as if it hadn't kept time for generations. The woman with the Caribbean accent was friendlier and more soft-spoken in person than she had been on the phone. She introduced herself as Marie. I couldn't tell if she was a friend or a nurse or a housekeeper or some combination of the above. She took my dripping coat and led me past darkened rooms.

“He can't talk anymore,” she whispered. “Not for months now. But his mind's sharp as a tack.”

“How does he—”

“He writes. I've tried to get him to use the computer, but he prefers his notepad. You'll see.” She glanced at me from the corner of her eye. “I was surprised he allowed you to come. He doesn't bother with most folks anymore. Says they wear him out. But he got up and shaved this morning for you.”

At the back of the house was an unexpectedly cheerful sitting room. A fire blazed at one end, and before it, in one of those mammoth, corduroy La-Z-Boy recliners favored by old people, sat a man. He pushed the chair upright when I entered and rose to shake my hand. Snow was stooped and shriveled and didn't look as if he'd been tall to begin with. The top of his scaly, bald head barely reached my chin. His skin was sallow and flecks of dried blood dotted his jaw, casualties from his attempt at a morning shave. I felt a wave of pity, imagining him splashing at the sink, the effort it must have required.

Snow gestured for me to sit. He lined his own heels up against the
edge of the recliner, stuck out his bottom, and allowed himself to fall backward into the deep chair, the way I remembered my grandmother doing after she got too frail to sit and stand on her own. Snow and I studied each other. He might be in the advanced stages of cancer, but his eyes were clear and lucid. Intelligent. Marie was right: his mind seemed sharp as a tack.

“Thank you for seeing me. Do you know why I'm here?”

He reached toward a wooden side table between us. On it lay a pen and a brown moleskin notebook.

How do you do,
he wrote, then met my eye and nodded formally. On the next line, in a spidery scrawl:
Why don't you tell me.

So I did. I told him about what had happened to the Smiths in the house on Eulalia Road. About how I had been raised in another city, by another family, and had only recently learned of the existence of my first family. About how I had lived almost my entire life with a bullet inside my neck. He appeared to listen closely, scratching out the occasional
!
at dramatic moments in my narrative, and once a
?
when he seemed to want me to elaborate.

“They never caught my parents' killer,” I concluded. “But you know one of the people who was questioned. He was your lawyer.”

Snow nodded and wrote,
Ethan.

“You told the police that you were with him all that afternoon.”

Another nod.

“Was that true?”

The intelligent eyes held mine. His hand rested motionless on the notebook. That had been too abrupt a way to ask; I needed to come at the question more subtly. But I felt impatient, and the stitches on my neck itched, and this room felt stiflingly hot.

“Mr. Sinclare came to see me a couple of weeks ago,” I tried again.

Verlin Snow had no eyebrows, but the wrinkles on his forehead wiggled in a way that suggested he would have raised his eyebrows if he could.

“He was kind. But some of the things he said—or, rather, things he chose not to say—don't make sense to me.” I leaned forward and placed my hand on Snow's emaciated knee. “One other thing that you should know. I was attacked, in my house in Washington, one night last week. Someone tried to hurt me. I think—I don't know, but I think it was someone who knew that the bullet in my neck posed a threat to them. Someone who knew it could send them to prison.”

Snow's forehead contracted in a spasm of wrinkles.
!!!,
he wrote.

“Please help me.”

Still his eyes held mine.

“I don't care why you had to hire Ethan Sinclare as your attorney. I don't care what kind of trouble you were in. That's not why I'm here.” I squeezed Snow's knee, hard. “That day. The day my parents died. Could Ethan Sinclare have been at their house? You swore it was impossible. That the two of you were locked up together in a conference room.”

Verlin Snow picked up the pen. Slowly, in cramped, shaky letters, he wrote:

I lied.