“Brady? What’s up, bad news?” Jenna asked when I returned to the table. I had no words. I shook my head, staring up at the ceiling. Vaughn was leaning back, arms crossed, frowning. But that was his usual posture.

  I excused myself to the restroom and threw up my first margarita into the toilet. That was the second time that week I had puked into a cantina toilet. The first time was when I viewed the contents of an envelope Sam handed me containing pictures of me and a dead prostitute. A dead prostitute and me, excuse my English.

  On the bright side, the picture that was blasted out to the world was one less picture to hold over me. On the negative side, a picture of me with a naked prostitute was being socialized across the internet. The extent of the repercussions of this were difficult for me to even begin to imagine.

  In a day filled with bizarre and disturbing events, by far the worst was when Jenna showed me the video of Alexander, allegedly walking out of Mike’s room shortly before he died. I don’t know why I use the word “allegedly”; what would she have to gain by fabricating such a thing? I guess we have all been programmed to include that word when society became overly politically correct and litigious in the 1990s.

  Alexander murdered Mike, without a doubt. There was no other plausible explanation for him to be walking out of his hospital room shortly before he flatlined, a tattooed monster wearing a skimpy hospital gown hustling to get away before the doctors and nurses responded. That pillowcase had his blood on it, I would bet my life on it.

  Being trapped inside the Taj while it was dragged behind the train caused a number of injuries to Alexander, and he cleverly used his hospital visit to multitask and kill Mike. This murder would have likely gone unnoticed if he hadn’t been unintentionally recorded.

  That was unsettling enough, but the fact that Minelli ignored the substantial evidence handed to him was very troubling. Additionally troubling was the fact that Minelli was at Cloverleaf, socializing with the Romanians. When I saw him enter their apartment wing, I assumed he would be arresting Alexander or the little Romanian who attacked him. Instead, he disappeared inside for over an hour. What were they doing, watching The Bachelor together?

  Why would Minelli let a murder and his own personal beating slide? They obviously had blackmail material on him. Something serious. A picture of Minelli being straddled by a hooker would end his law-enforcement career. Did they have something even worse?

  I had a multitude of things I needed to take care of, so I had to narrow my focus. What was the highest priority? As much as my reputation was being permanently destroyed, there was little I could do about it. Any excuses would be identical to those of a guilty man. It wasn’t me. It isn’t how it looks. I was drugged. Eyeroll-inspiring drivel.

  Priority number one had to be settling the disputes with Minelli and the Romanians. I had no strategy on how to do that and no allies to back me up. Piece of cake.

  Vaughn was the wild card. While he was very angry about being assaulted, Mike Clemmons being killed in his hospital bed seemed to deeply disturb him. Mike and Vaughn had not been friends and just had a few incidental encounters at the campground, but Vaughn seemed to suddenly take his death personally. Good. I had to find a way to leverage that.

  I don’t think Vaughn interpreted Stoica’s murder as a racist act. The actions of both Mike and Stoica were behavior oriented; Mike attacked Stoica, Stoica retaliated and killed Mike. But the fact that Mike was black mattered to Vaughn. He didn’t articulate that, but I was certain it mattered. If I was the one Stoica killed in that hospital bed, Vaughn wouldn’t have lost any sleep over it.

  This didn’t make Vaughn a bad person, but just another tribalist. We tended to be more offended by transgressions against those who looked like us or share cultural similarities.

  Jenna was another difficult one to figure out. She had nothing to gain by contacting me, other than possibly alleviating the burden of knowing she had interfered with my ability to see Mike before he was killed. What did she hope to gain? Why not go over Minelli’s head and share the video and pillowcase information with the state or federal police?

  I needed sleep, badly, but the wheels would not stop turning in my head. I decided to check my messages again. I had two.

  Sullivan, this is Travis Barrett at Sandusky Shores. The RV next to yours burned down ... and two people were found dead inside.

  Luckily some neighbors hosed your RV off and saved it. There was damage to the exterior of it. I’m not sure if it is habitable. Sheriff Minelli is back on site and wants you to come in and answer some questions ASAP.

  My stomach lurched. The neighbors died in an RV fire? It had to be the old couple next door. I met the old man a few seasons ago when he came out to winterize his RV in the fall after not visiting the entire season. His wife had health issues limiting her mobility.

  Mr. Holderbaum had chastised my kids for feeding breadcrumbs to seagulls down by the shore. Something about attracting winged rats to shit all over and how the birds weren’t supposed to consume human food. I actually agreed. People frequently fed the birds park food at Gravity Junction, and they became so aggressive that they would swoop down and attack people nearby just trying to eat. I made sure the kids didn’t do it again.

  The neighbor on the other side was the single dad from Kentucky with the fifth wheel. Could it have been him and one of his kids who died? I didn’t recall if he was there when I exited the campground the other day.

  My mind raced. The RV next door to mine just goes up in flames and kills two people? That absolutely cannot be an accident; it had to be an attempt to burn down my RV. This group of people were burn-happy.

  I got a bottled water from the mini-fridge and took a drink as I tried to wrap my brain around two more people dying at the campground. It wasn’t as shocking as it should have been.

  A few weeks ago, the death of acquaintances in a fire nearby would have been very alarming. Now a sort of numbness had set in. People had been dying left and right around me, and it was losing its shock value. That couldn’t be good.

  I listened to the second message.

  Hi, Brady ... this is Jeff from work. I got an email with this picture of you earlier. I was gonna let it go until tomorrow but thought I would try to speak with you if you were still awake. This email went to my home and work accounts, and also to the deputy director’s. And the director’s and the site manager’s. I have to talk to HR in the morning. Until we can sort this out, you are on unpaid leave. Give me a call tomorrow. Whatever you’re going through, you need to stay in touch with me.

  Data 6

  7:55 a.m.

  I was lucky enough to be solo while patrolling the campground. Patrolling was the incorrect word to use. I randomly drove up and down the streets without any purpose.

  Except I avoided Starling. I did not want to see the latest ruined RV. I did not want to think about the elderly couple who had perished inside.

  The Holderbaums, who had rarely been out to the campground. Mrs. Holderbaum was having health issues, so she rarely traveled.

  Patrick was a world-class idiot. A criminally bad criminal. The level of heat he would bring down on the campground was beyond comprehension. The FBI, state police, and Sandusky PD had been swarming the campground for hours.

  At what point do they shut this place down? How many bodies had to be stacked up here before someone stepped in and put a stop to it?

  Thank God I had nothing to do with the latest RV arson. I wasn’t needed for such a crude operation. But still, I was associated with the monsters who did this.

  How could Patrick burn down the wrong RV? I was betting he was completely pickled when he did it. Why the Romanians recruited that loser was beyond me.

  My stomach gurgled. Since my diet was consistently bad, I was always suffering from minor stomach problems. Lately, they had gotten a lot worse. I don’t know what an ulcer feels like, but the constant burning was making me wonder if I had one. Not that I could do anything about it, without health insurance.

  I had eleven thousand dollars stashed in a shoebox on a shelf in my trailer laundry room, so I could afford a doctor’s appointment. But I felt okay at the moment. Maybe I would drink some chocolate milk on a break; that seemed to help sometimes.

  My life looked so bleak in every way imaginable. But I’m too much of a coward to seriously consider suicide. I thought of it often; I always had since my teenage years. Life was always painful for me, even in the days when I was succeeding in Silicon Valley and my lifestyle should have been pain free.

  Exiting my current situation in any manner, even death, seemed so appealing. But when it came down to it, I couldn’t harm myself. I couldn’t go violently, like with a handgun or the way Chris Randolph did out on the train tracks. That took real guts, guts I lacked.

  I could envision myself overdosing on prescription medication. Not that I possessed any. The movies and soap operas always featured people washing down sleeping pills with vodka. Meanwhile, I had never had a taste of vodka, I would probably throw it up immediately.

  Brady’s life was ruined because of me. I rationalized it by telling myself that if I refused orders to harm him, I would be beaten or killed by the Romanians. While this was true, it provided me with little comfort.

  I’m the one who restored many of the technical weapons Randy had provided me. I scraped the data to get all the emails. I sent out the picture to hundreds of people, including his wife and boss. What I did was shameful.

  Although I was not suicidal, I was trying to come to grips with the reality that I would be dead soon. Either I would make a misstep with the Romanians or Brady would harm me. Sullivan was integral in planning the takedown of Randy’s crew, so he was capable of anything.

  Travis 2

  8:15 a.m.

  I was too old to pull a damn all-nighter, but that was basically what I did. It started with phone calls from seasonals: Why are you sending porn out to your customers? I was totally confused.

  I was at home watching TV when the calls began. I logged into the Sandusky Shores email account. There had been no outgoing mail from that account recently. I breathed a sigh of relief that I wasn’t hacked.

  I asked one of the callers to forward the email. He refused because that would be “disseminating porn.”

  “Were the people in the picture underaged?” I asked.

  “No. It’s the guy that camps across from me near the shower house,” he said. The caller was the guy at site 14, the one who is always wearing a Notre Dame cap.

  “The female is an adult?”

  “Hell yeah, she is all woman,” he said, snickering. An angry female voice shouted something at him in the background, and he cleared his throat.

  “Then send it; there is nothing illegal about it,” I said in a frustrated voice.

  “No can do, I’m deleting it. Just thought I would let you know,” he said and hung up.

  Eventually, I convinced one of the complainers to forward it, and my jaw dropped. It was Brady Sullivan, all right. In the same kind of setup that had entrapped me months ago. It was the only reason I allowed all of Randy’s trash to run wild at my campground.

  Many who camped at Sandusky Shores would recognize the layout of the room in the picture. It was one hell of an advertisement for our cabins.

  I had assumed the blackmail shit disappeared when the Taj and Trailer Alpha disappeared. Obviously not.

  I squinted to read the computer screen. At first, the email appeared to be sent from me from the campground account, but then I noticed a minor difference: sanduskyshorezcampground@gmail.com. There was a “z” where an “s” should be.

  I reviewed the list of emails in the “To:” section. Almost all of them were from the campground. Someone had obviously hacked the campground account and stolen them. It had to be Data. But why wouldn’t he use my actual email to send it? It was more humane for me this way because I could prove the email did not originate with the campground.

  Copying all the addresses into a new email, I explained the first one was sent by a hacker, and how to tell the difference. Then I had to clean up the campground social media sites, where a fictitious user had posted the picture.

  I felt like I had gotten ahead of the Sullivan pic and mitigated the damage of it, so I went to sleep. A few hours later, I got a frantic call from Patrick about Sullivan’s RV burning. Two RVs destroyed within a few days. Damn, this had been an ugly week.

  I rolled out of bed, cursing. The missus didn’t even move, just lying there under a pile of blankets, breathing heavily.

  I expected to see a fire truck and maybe a police car. Sullivan’s RV had been empty so they would just put the fire out and write up a report.

  As soon as I arrived, Patrick came stumbling out of the security booth. I noticed the frame of the booth still hadn’t been fixed from the other day when Sullivan’s wife wrecked it. I made a note to myself to save the repair receipts and add it to Sullivan’s bill.

  At least the weather was warm, although with a bit of a cool breeze blowing on and off.

  Patrick was visibly drunk. Drunk plus something more than alcohol. He wore a blue windbreaker over a yellow hoody, his right hand in his pocket, the left one gesturing toward the shower house.

  It occurred to me he was also on duty when the Taj was stolen. He had a knack for being on site when shit went awry. If I had a real security guard on the payroll, maybe there would be less shady behavior at the campground.

  Trying to communicate with Patrick was tough. His speech was heavily slurred, his eyes drooping. He stumbled as he walked over.

  “EMS is at site 32,” he slurred, walking over to a work cart.

  “You mean 31, right? Let me drive, buddy,” I said when he got in. He stared at me in confusion. Patrick seemed perfectly capable of driving into a tree.

  “I gotcha, boss,” he said with a crooked smile.

  “Nah, I’m driving,” I said, walking around the driver’s side of the cart. He just sat there with a glazed-eyed, stupid look on his face. I was so tired and disgruntled that I felt the urge to grab hold of him and toss him out on the pavement. He reluctantly scooted over to the right.

  We drove down toward Sullivan’s site. A small crowd was still gathered across the street at the gazebo sites, doing their usual gawking thing, milling around and chattering.

  A fire truck and ambulance were parked alongside the shower house. I immediately sensed that something was wrong beyond a simple unoccupied RV fire. Maybe someone inhaled smoke or got burned trying to put it out?

  An older fireman was standing out on the street watching a younger fireman hose down what remained of an RV. The Holderbaums’ RV at 32. There was an old gray Honda Accord parked on the street in front of the site, with two tires in the grass. The side of the car was scorched.

  Mrs. Holderbaum had been sick, and they weren’t able to camp regularly, so I cut them a break on the fees the past few seasons. I had no idea they were at the campground.

  “Good morning,” I said, standing beside the idle firefighter.

  “This is the third time I’ve been out in this area this week. Before that, I don’t think I’ve been out here three times in the last ten years with the SFD. This is the first time I’ve seen one of these result in fatalities,” the older guy said.

  “Did you just say fatalities?” I asked, cocking my head.

  He frowned at me. “Come on, you just heard that for the first time?” he asked.

  I looked over at Patrick, who was still sitting on the work cart, staring off into space.

  “I was told by an employee that an uninhabited RV burned at site 31,” I said quietly.

  As I spoke, the ambulance started up and pulled forward slowly. I watched as it rolled to the end of the street and took a right. No sirens or lights.

  “The fire was at 32. That ambulance had two bodies in it, the Holderbaums. They were inside when it caught fire. Both died of smoke inhalation. Mrs. Holderbaum has oxygen tanks that exploded and accelerated the fire.”

  I put my hands on my hips and bent over a bit. Two more dead people? After three dead in Randy’s RV. And Chris Randolph dying on the train tracks. This campground was a death trap.

  “Any idea what started this?” I asked.

  “Not yet. We are gathering evidence. We need to interview your guy over there. He seems to be a bit out of it.”

  “No kidding. Yeah, this is crazy. Anybody questioned him yet?”

  “Not formally. I’m sure various cops will have some questions for him. The rest of the cavalry is on its way.”

  I nodded.

  I walked back over to the work cart, where Patrick had remained seated. At first, I thought he was looking down at his phone, but he was actually sleeping. Two dead people were just hauled away, but he didn’t let that disturb his sleep.

  We took off. The work cart lurched forward, and I spun the wheel to do a U-turn. He leaned so far to the right that I thought he was going to spill out onto the street. He recovered at the last moment and sat up, wincing.

  “You all right?”

  “Yeah, just my ribs. They are still hurting.”

  But there was something else going on. He had kept his right hand in his windbreaker pocket the entire time, even when he lost his balance.

  As we approached the office, more law enforcement began to arrive. Sheriff Minelli, two state cops, a few unmarked federal vehicles, and another fire truck. My entire day was fucked.

  I motioned for them to follow me and led them back down to 32. Of course, Minelli was in the lead, even though I thought he wasn’t supposed to be involved with the campground crimes. I guess this was a new issue, so maybe they authorized him to reengage. Great. I hung around for a few minutes while the firemen briefed them and then tried to slip away.

  “Hey, Travis,” Minelli called as I was getting into the work cart. He approached my work cart, cigarette dangling from the side of his mouth, moving forward into my personal space. “I will be down in a few minutes. Meet me in your office. Bring your guy there with you. Don’t let him talk to no one until I do.”

 

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29