After Midnight (19 page)

Although the initial investigation found only Congressman Calhoun’s prints on his wheelchair and concluded he’d rolled off the steps accidentally, his funeral attracted network attention. When neither Steve nor Jess would provide a comment, the three-ring circus focused on a solemn-eyed Dub Calhoun. Suitably weepy, Maggie clung to his arm.

The last days of July gave way to a blistering hot August. Slowly, Jess grew used to Steve’s presence in her house and in her bed. She even grew accustomed to his habit of returning every scattered magazine and carelessly tossed uniform item its rightful place.

She experienced a good deal more difficulty adjusting to her leash, however. That was the only way she could describe the tight surveillance shared by the Air Force Office of Special Investigations, the Eglin security forces, and the Walton County Sheriff’s department.

“It’s been two weeks since the shooting,” she pointed out to Steve over a late evening meal of salad, parmesan-crusted chicken, and spinach fettuccine. “Almost a week since Calhoun died. When will we get the official lab report on the rifle shell and the boot print your people lifted from the dirt by the dock?”

“The official report won’t give us any more information than the unofficial call I got the day after the shooting,” he said between rhythmic crunches on the raw carrot slices decorating his salad. “The shell is a Remington Extronx 50 electric primed rifle cartridge. They come twenty to a box, ten boxes to a case, and are available at any hunting supply store in the country for twenty-five dollars a box.”

Frowning, Jess nursed her wineglass in both hands while he forked in more carrots. The man ate the most regular meals, she’d discovered. Healthy, nutritious, and disgustingly balanced. Anticipating the mini-feasts he insisted on crafting each evening, Jess had resorted to satisfying her fast-food addictions at lunch with quick forays to Anthony’s Pizza or the Burger King on base.

“The boot print might have yielded better details,” he continued calmly after he downed his carrots, “if a certain gun-toting lieutenant colonel hadn’t run through it two or three times.”

She didn’t dignify that with a reply. “It’s still hard to believe that everyone on our list of possible suspects produced air-tight alibis.”

The number of people with a possible grudge against her had left Jess more than a bit shaken. In addition to Bill Petrie, the list included the grieving widows of Ron Clark and the Reverend McConnell, both of whom had been questioned about their knowledge of their husbands’ involvement in an incident at the Blue Crab twenty-five years ago. They had to hate Jess for coming back and opening old wounds, smearing their husbands’ memories in the process.

The original list had included Congressman Calhoun. His son. His daughter-in-law. Ed Babcock. Even the captain of the tugboat who’d delivered the polluted fuel and now faced stiff fines for improperly purging his barges. Like all the others, the produced witnesses to vouch for his whereabouts. He’d been off-loading fuel in Texas at the time.

After two weeks of interviews and questions and soul-searching, she and Steve were no closer to an answer than they were before.

“How long do we continue the surveillance?” she asked, swirling the wine in the blue-glazed goblet.

“As long as it takes.”

“I run an organization as big or bigger than yours. I know these extra patrols and escorts are eating into your operating budget.”

“I’m not worried about my operating budget.”

“Then what about your professional reputation? How many more editorials and talk shows will it take to convince your constituents to initiate a recall?”

Calmly, he knifed into his chicken. “We’ve had this discussion before. Several times, in fact. Serving as sheriff of Walton County is just a job, Jess. It won’t destroy me if I’m voted out of office.” His eyes met hers over a forkful of steaming, crusted chicken. “Not like it would if the shooter got to you.”

Her heart pinging, she lifted her glass and tipped it to her lips. A sardonic glint came into his eyes.

“You suppose the day will come when you won’t put some barrier between us every time I try to tell you how I feel about you?”

She hid behind a flippant grin. “Anything’s possible, Paxton.”

Blowing out a breath, he let his glance stray to the framed 3x5 photo on the shelf above the sink.

“You said you were like your mother in every way that counts.”

“I am.”

“Was she afraid to let down the barriers, too?”

“If you listen to the people around here, my mother let down her barriers all too often.”

The comment held only a trace of rancor. It was truth from any perspective but hers.

“Tell me about her, Jess.”

“Why?”

“I’ve always heard that a man can see the daughter in the mother. I’d like to know if you measure up to your mom.”

That brought a smile. “I try.”

“So tell me about her.”

Swirling the ruby red Merlot in the bottom of the goblet, she gathered her thoughts. How to describe the woman who’d given Jess such unconditional, uncritical, and unceasing love?

“Mom didn’t have much luck when it came to choosing her men. She quit high school to run off with a drummer. If I remember the story right, that affair lasted less than three months. She went through a whole string of bums after him, including the man she thinks was my father.”

Jess could almost catch the flash of her mother’s irrepressible grin in the garnet depths of the Merlot. Helen had always managed to shake off the hurt of being dumped, claiming it didn’t matter as long as she had Jess. And it hadn’t mattered, until the daughter was old enough to understand the labels others attached to her mother’s approach to life and love.

“Money was tight, but I never remember lacking for school clothes or Christmas presents. She worked hard. Picking cucumbers. Sewing tobacco. Wiping down cars at one of those automatic car washes. Waitressing. Mostly waitressing.”

Jess used to hang out at the pancake house in Pennsylvania. She’d eaten most of her meals at the Sonic in North Carolina where Helen car-hopped for a few months. Gradually, the jobs had grown scarcer and the establishments where her mother worked less and less family-oriented.

“I don’t remember when she started drinking. I think I was about five or six. The drugs started not long after that.”

She lifted her gaze and flashed a warning. She didn’t want pity, and refused to accept anyone’s vision of the past but her own.

“I never went to school hungry. I never had to wash my own clothes or put my hair in ponytails. Whatever she did at night, my mother always, always dragged herself out of bed in the morning and got me off to school.”

“Sounds like you were her anchor.”

“She was mine, too. All we had was each other until she met Frank.”

“Your step-father?”

“My father. He adopted me right after he and mom married.”

The memories came faster now, spinning through a collage of Arizona’s desert heat, afternoons spent in the garage where Frank wrestled with rusted radiators, her mother’s painful weaning from alcohol and drugs. The joy of Jess’s commissioning and early years in the air force. The agony of watching Helen die.

Absently, she massaged her right hand. “Frank never finished high school, either, but he’s the kindest, most generous man I know. You’d like him, Steve.”

“Sounds as if I would.”

Unlike the fiancé she’d brought home for such a short, disastrous visit. Steve would see past the dirt under the nails and the ill-fitting dentures, just as the down-to-earth mechanic would look beyond the lazy smile, the weathered skin, the Arnold Schwartznegger shoulders and pecs.

And the badge. The badge wouldn’t freeze Frank as it had Jess for so long.

“Maybe you should call him,” Steve suggested. “Let him know what you’ve been going through.”

“I started to last week, just to hear his voice. I don’t want him to know about this…this mess, though. There’s no point in upsetting him.”

“You might want to reconsider, Jess. Your mother could have told him something she didn’t tell you.”

Her fork stilled. Blankly, she stared at Steve. It had never occurred to her to ask Frank about the Blue Crab. The roadside dive was part of Helen’s past, Jess’s past. What happened in that smoky back room took place years before they’d drifted into Arizona.

“So you’ve abandoned the theory that the attempts on my life have no relation to the assault on my mother?”

“I haven’t abandoned anything.” Steve said calmly. “Finish your dinner, then we’ll give your father a call.”

Jess caught Frank Blackwell in the middle of his Thursday evening domino game. She could hear his long-time crony and arch-rival shuffling in the background. The cracked ivory tiles Jess had played with as child clacked like anxious hens scratching for feed.

“What’s the current game count?” she asked.

“He’s ahead by three, but not for long.”

Considering that the two men had kept a running tally for more than fifteen years, a three-win margin either way was nothing short of remarkable.

“I’m glad you called,” Frank said. “I was gonna give you a ring this weekend if I didn’t hear from you. How’s your new job going?”

New? So much had happened in the past three months that Jess felt as though she’d commanded the 96th Supply Squadron all her life.

“It’s going.” She hesitated a moment before taking the plunger. “If you do call here, don’t be surprised if a man answers.”

“A man, huh? Sure hope he’s got more bottom to him than the last one you hooked up with.”

“I’ll put him on and let you decide. His name’s Steve, by the way.”

Wedging into a corner of the sofa, she curled her feet under her and listened with unabashed curiosity to the one-sided conversation. Patiently, Steve replied to Frank’s grilling, which included queries about his present employment – cop. His hobbies – fishing, hunting, and the occasional round of golf. His intentions where Jess was concerned.

“We’re still negotiating,” he said, hooking a brown in Jess’s direction.

After another couple of exchanges, he handed the receiver back. She couldn’t think of a way to ease into the past, so took a deep breath and plunged right in.

“Did mom ever talk to you about the time we lived here in Florida, Dad?”

“Once or twice.”

The guarded note that crept into his voice straightened her legs and brought her upright on the sofa. She flashed Steve a quick look, nodding when he gestured to the red button on the phone.

“I’d like Steve to hear this. Mind if I put you on the speaker?”

“Guess not.”

Hitting the button, she settled the receiver in the cradle. The scratchy echo in the speaker assured her she hadn’t lost Frank.

“Did mom mention working at a place called the Blue Crab?”

“Can’t say as I remember the name of the place.”

“What do you remember?”

“Just that Helen had some rough times while she worked there. Got in over her head, went from poppin’ pills to the bad stuff. The sunuvabitch she worked for kept her supplied.”

Steve cocked his head, his brows slicing down. “Wayne Whittier peddled drugs?”

“Why am I not surprised?” Jess muttered.

“If this Whittier character is the bastard Helen worked for,” Frank put in, “he’s bad news, Jess. Real bad news.”

“Not any more. He’s dead, dad.”

“Good riddance.”

“Yeah,” she said softly. “Good riddance. Did mom tell you anything else about Whittier, or talk about the customers at the Blue Crab?”

“Not that I recall.”

Frank had little more to add. Helen’s past had always been her business as far as he was concerned. Jess hung up a few moments later and curled back in her corner.

“What do you think?”

“I think I’ll take tomorrow morning off and get in a little fishing,” he answered slowly.

“Well, whatever works for you.”

The dubious reply drew him back from wherever his thoughts had taken him.

“Walton County isn’t Miami or Atlanta, Jess. We don’t depend on snitches or pay informants. Word gets around here. If Whittier was dealing drugs at the Blue Crab, Sheriff Boudreaux knew about it.”

“So?”

“So I’m curious why he didn’t mention that bit of information the last time we talked.”

“Maybe he didn’t think it was pertinent.”

“Maybe.”

Steve also thought it curious that he’d found no mention of drugs in Whittier’s long and otherwise colorful file in his department’s computer. He’d stop by the office on his way up to Boudreaux’s tomorrow, he decided. Have his folks run another, expanded query. Could be they’d missed something besides the drugs.

“What about you?” he asked when he trailed Jess into the bedroom some time later. “What have you got on the schedule tomorrow?”

“Just the usual,” she said wryly. “Stand up. Staff meetings. Dumping about four million gallons of polluted fuel.”

Steve might have evinced a greater degree of interest in her planned activities if she hadn’t reached for the hem of her T-shirt and dragged it over her head at that precise moment.

He didn’t even think about those four million gallons of fuel again until central dispatch caught him on the way up to Boudreaux’s and radioed an urgent request to activate the Emergency Operations Center.

The sun made a valiant attempt to penetrate a thin layer of clouds when Jess drove across the Mid-Bay Bridge the morning after her phone call to her father. Steve tailed her as far as the turn-off to Highway 20. A patrol car picked her up from there.

She waggled her fingers to Steve in farewell, then rolled her shoulders and slumped against the leather seat. Aches from the previous night’s love-making tugged at muscles.

If Steve experienced similar aches this morning, he hadn’t let on. He’d been preoccupied the whole time he downed his disgustingly healthy breakfast of bran flakes, sliced bananas, and fresh-squeezed juice. So preoccupied he forgot to rinse his dishes and stow them neatly in the dishwasher.

Jess felt her mouth curve in the beginnings of a smirk. Away from his boat, the man might just develop a few human habits after all.

Any inclination to grin disappeared the moment she drove through Eglin’s back gate. The sun speared through the gray clouds enough to paint the tank farm just off to her left in a shimmering haze. Despite the heavy overcast, weather forecasters had predicted temperatures in the triple digits today. Not exactly ideal conditions for pumping millions of gallons of contaminated JP-8 out of a storage tank and into a long string of barges.

The first tug was supposed to nose its way into Weekly Bayou at seven-thirty. Jess had called her command center to verify the ETA before she left her condo. She’d also left word for Al Monroe to cover stand-up and Colonel Hamilton’s staff meeting this morning. She wanted to observe this phase of the recovery operation first-hand.

Ed Babcock had already arrived at the fuel dock when she pulled up. So had Lieutenant Ourek and the NCO in charge of dock operations. The muggy heat stained the lieutenant’s cheeks brick red. Damp rings circled Sergeant Weathers’s armpits, and he appeared only too happy to defer to Sergeant Babcock’s far greater experience and expertise for answers to Jess’s questions.

“It should be a pretty straightforward operation,” Ed reported, his boots thudding as he led the way down the metal gangplank to the floating dock. “We’ll reverse the pumps to bring the fuel down from the storage tank. The tug captain and his crew will tend the connectors and monitor the fill levels in the barge compartments.”

“Why do I think you’re making this sound too easy?”

“It is easy, as long as the crew stays on their toes. Although…”

“Yes?”

A frown creased his brow as he darted a quick look at the sky.

“With this heat and the low cloud cover, the fumes are going to be intense.”

He kept his tone casual, but Jess noted that his wrestler’s shoulders were tense under his freshly laundered fatigue shirt.

“The captain has to make sure his men don’t overdo it and breathe in toxic levels. All it takes is for one of those guys to get dizzy and trip over a crowbar or bucket. A single spark could ignite the fumes.”

Or a single cigarette, Jess thought, repressing a shudder. She hadn’t forgotten that Babcock’s story about tossing a crew member about to light up into the bayou.

Lieutenant Ourek leaned forward, squinting toward the bay. “Here comes the first tug. Right on schedule.”

“Good,” Ed muttered. “Let’s hope that means the captain knows what he’s doing.”

Shedding their fatigue shirts, he and Sergeant Weathers climbed into the launch moored to the dock and prepared to deploy the containment boom. Rivulets of sweat trickled between Jess’s breasts as she bent her elbows on the rail and followed their progress.

“We need a new boom,” Lieutenant Ourek worried, watching the two men hook the end of the buoyant line. “That one’s older than I am.”

Jess bit back the comment that just about everything within sight was older than the fresh-faced butter-bar.

“Did you include a new boom in your budget submission for next fiscal year?”

“I’ve included it for the past three years,” he replied glumly. “It keeps getting red-lined.”

“How much are we talking about?”

His eyes brightened behind his rimless glasses. “Less than twenty thousand for the Super Swamp Boom manufactured by American Marine. It’s a calm water containment system, with twenty-two ounce PVC fabrics and hot-dipped galvanized steel ballast chains.”

Whatever those were.

“I’ll see what I can do,” Jess promised.

Eglin ought to be able to wiggle fifty thousand out of headquarters, seeing it was Ed Babcock who’d identified the SF445 problem. The engine run-ups Colonel Hamilton had ordered were still in progress, but preliminary results indicated potentially severe damage to the nozzles over an extended period of time. If headquarters balked at coughing up the additional funds, Jess could twist some arms at the Defense Fuel Center. Maybe link a new boom to this recovery operation.

Pushing back the brim of her 96th Supply Squadron ball cap with its silver oak leaf on the crown, she swiped her forearm across her forehead. Her fatigue shirt lay plastered to her back, and her toes were already swimming inside her leather boots. This looked to be a long, long day.

“What’s the latest estimate to empty the entire storage tank?”

“Well, it usually takes fourteen to twenty hours to off-load a typical barge load of a million gallons and pump it up through the filters to the tank. By removing the filters and reversing the pumps, we estimate the fuel will flow down into the barges almost a third faster.”

She performed the quick mental calculation. Four million gallons of polluted fuel. Four barges to fill. Ten to fifteen hours per barge.

“Sixty hours to completely purge the storage tank.”

“Right,” the lieutenant confirmed. “We’ll need an additional forty-eight hours to cleanse it and the pipeline.”

That was four days minimum, assuming her people worked around the clock, which wasn’t going to happen. Exhaustion too often led to carelessness, and carelessness when handling highly combustible fuels could mean disaster.

“You made it absolutely clear to the Defense Fuels Center that I want the barges to arrive on a staggered schedule, with sufficient time for our people to take a brake between loads?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Hold the tug captains to the ETAs. I don’t want one of the them slipping in early, thinking to shave a few hours off his trip.”

Promising to monitor the schedule personally, he stood beside Jess as the first tug push its two petroleum barges past the waiting launch. The moment the tug cleared, Sergeant Weathers sent the launch across the narrow throat of the bayou, dragging the boom behind. Once secured to the anchor chains, the floating barrier completely segregated the tug from the bay behind it and would – hopefully! – contain any oil that might spill over its sides.

With the boom deployed, Weathers brought the launch back to the dock. The two NCOs climbed out, joining Jess to watch the lead barge inch into position. The crew seemed to know what it was doing, she thought as they prepared for docking, but she didn’t draw a full breath until the barge had gently bounced against the bumpers and been secured.

Once it was docked, the crew stripped down and muscled the hose connecting the underwater pipeline into place. That done, they set about filling the first of nine separate compartments of the barge.

Even with the pumps reversed and the filters open, emptying the massive storage tank of the contaminated fuel was slow, dirty work. Oil gushed into the barge’s compartment, splashing onto the crewmembers and coating them with a bright sheen. Fumes trapped by the gray clouds clogged the air, so thick Jess was sure she could reach out and grab a fistful of the shimmering, noxious curtain.

At the tug captain’s invitation, she boarded the barge and squatted beside the compartment hatch to watch the oil flow. Every rattle and bump of the hose or hull made her nerves skitter. As Ed Babcock had pointed out, it would only take one spark…

Later, much later, she would learn the explosion came after a whole shower of sparks.

The only consolation, if there was any to be had in a disaster of that magnitude, was that it didn’t result from human error or carelessness, but from one of those capricious acts of nature that no one – no one! – could have predicted or prepared for.

Their first and only warning came too late to prevent the holocaust.

When her cel phone rang, Jess had returned to her observation point beside Lieutenant Ourek and had just glanced at her watch. The first compartment had been filled in under an hour and a half. The crew had already started on the second.

Unbelievably, it was only ten past nine. Lord, it seemed late. A lifetime later. Her head pounded from the fumes and there were still seven more compartments to fill after this one. Just on the first barge.

The past hour and a half had given Jess an even greater respect for her fuels management people, who labored under these abominable conditions every day. Thinking of ways to let them know she appreciated their work, she dug her pinging cel phone out of her shirt pocket and flipped up the lid.

“Colonel Blackwell.”

“This is Al.” Her deputy’s voice conveyed a note of raw urgency. “I wanted to make sure our people got the call from the command post.”

“What call?”

“The Coast Guard station at Destin just reported a freak cloud formation out over the bay. Two water spouts have been sighted, one of which was only a mile off-shore and heading our way.”

Her heart in her throat, Jess skimmed the horizon. She’d become so absorbed in the barge operation, she hadn’t even noticed that the low-hanging clouds had darkened from gray flannel to flint.

“The command post’s issued a tornado alert,” Al reported grimly. “The sirens should go off any moment.”

“Right.” Snapping the phone shut, Jess whirled on the lieutenant. “We’ve got a tornado alert.”

“What!”

“Come on.”

They started for the barge, intending to alert the others, at the same moment Sergeant Weathers came racing up the metal gangplank, his face ashen and his hand-held radio squawking.

“The command post’s put out a tornado alert.”

“We just heard.”

“I’ve instructed to the crew at the pumping station to halt the fuel flow. I need to tell Ed to secure the barge compartment.”

“Do it,” Jess ordered. Swinging back to the lieutenant, she pulled together her whirling thoughts. “Alert your on-call operators to stand-by in case we have to initiate spill-containment procedures.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Do you have a copy of the spill response checklist with you?”

“It’s in my vehicle. I’ll…”

He broke off, his eyes widening. Every trace of color drained from his cheeks.

“Dear God!”

Jess spun around, knowing what she’d see. Still she wasn’t prepared for how close the waterspout was. Or how fast it moved.

The thin, pewter funnel towered above the bayou, spiraling from surface to sky. Mesmerizing in its soft, soughing hiss. Graceful in its lethal power.

As the trees on either side of the bayou began to whip from side to side, Jess screamed a warning to the NCO grimly supervising shut-down operations.

“Ed! Behind you!”

He twisted, took one look over his shoulder, and leaped for the hose from the underwater pipeline. The flow had slowed, but hadn’t yet cut off. Shouldering aside the stunned, gaping crewmembers, Ed wrestled with the nozzle.

“Clear the barge!” the tug captain shouted in English, then again in Spanish. “Clear the barge!”

“The damned thing’s coming right down the bayou,” Lieutenant Ourek got out, shouting now to be heard over the rattle of wind and trees. “You’d better get off the dock, colonel.”

“I will, as soon as our people are clear.”

She shot a glance at the deadly waterspout, whipped her gaze back to the men racing along the length of barge. A solitary figure still fought the hose.

“Ed! Let it go! Take cover! Now!”

Even as Jess screamed the order, she knew it was too late. Weekly Bayou seemed to rise, as if begging to be drawn up into the air. The resulting wave lifted the rear of the tug, then sent it careening into the rear barge. It, in turn, shoved the forward barge into the dock.

The pylons gave. The floating platform tilted under Jess’s boots. The long metal gangplank buckled, shot upward. Folding almost in half, it began a slow, agonizing descent.

With sickening certainty, she knew it would crash onto the barge’s open compartment. She saw Ed take a dive to one side, go down, throw up his arms to protect his head from the twisted steel.

She leaped for the deck, hit it running. The awful shriek of metal grinding against metal assaulted her ears, almost drowning the tornado’s deadly hiss. Wind and water whipped into her face, her eyes, her mouth as she grabbed Ed’s arm and dragged him free of the mangled gangplank.

“It’s going to blow!” he yelled, staggering to his feet. “The whole damned thing’s going to blow!”

Jess never saw the spark that ignited the fuel. With a desperate lunge, Ed shoved her over the side. She tumbled into the bayou at the same instant the world seemed to explode.