Memories fade. People in Oxford may be willing to do a solid for a returning college athlete. Maybe I could get a high school coaching gig and get back into football.

  Football was everything from first grade through my senior year in college. Then I ended my relationship with the sport on a bad note. When football went away, my purpose went away. I just drifted for years in a fog.

  That was gonna end. I was climbing out of this rut and moving on with my life. Step one was to wrap up my time at this campground.

  Brady 17

  11:00 a.m.

  Marcy had totally ghosted me. I could usually get a return message out of her if I was persistent, even after getting “caught” entertaining another woman in my RV. Our RV.

  I thought that was the final straw, but it was just the semi-final straw. The pic of me in a cabin with a woman was the final straw. It was a sure bet that legal papers were being drafted in some Cleveland law office for our divorce.

  My kids were the real victims in all of this. They were losing their two-parent household. We would now be just another divorce statistic.

  Marriage is always a risky prospect. Statistically, over half were destined for failure. We all think not mine, and proceed accordingly, risking half of our assets in a coin flip. I had lost that coin flip.

  My marriage was already shaky before Randy Gorey entered my life. The events he set into motion over the past week had shattered any hope of salvaging it.

  There was a sense of relief at its demise. Marcy wasn’t going to change. Change back, that was the correct term. She had already changed from the person I had married to someone else, someone totally different. I was unwilling to change along with her.

  As bizarre as it was, my marriage wasn’t my biggest problem at the moment. The Romanians were, and that is where my focus had to be directed. It was difficult, given my domestic issues. But things could be worse. The picture with the dead Romanian woman was still in their possession. If her body turned up and my picture with her was released, my life would be over.

  Data undoubtedly knew where her body was. Viktor relocated her body on Saturday from Put-In-Bay Island to an industrial warehouse on Columbus Road in Sandusky. I doubted it was still there; the large blue tote with her body was crammed into it still neatly arranged on a shelf alongside containers of industrial supplies and pallets of construction materials.

  Data was temporarily my ally, but only because I briefly held the cards. After the Romanians stepped up and filled the power vacuum left when Randy died, he pivoted his loyalty over to them. Data was a soulless opportunist, a dishonorable chameleon, scrambling to align himself with whichever side appeared likeliest to succeed. Consequences were coming his way.

  Except for those few rainy hours when Mike was interrogating him out on the campground trail, Data had not had to suffer any discomfort for his criminal behavior. The big Romanian roughed him up a little, but otherwise, he was unscathed. That was about to change.

  After confirming with Candy that Data was working at the campground, I left the motel and headed in that direction in Mike’s S-10. I parked it at a restaurant on Columbus Road and began walking. I had tucked Mike’s .357 in the back of my blue jeans like I saw people do on television.

  It was a beautiful day for a walk. The sun was out, and there was a slight breeze. In summers past, I would have been out enjoying the day with my family. Or sitting at work and obsessing on the clock, counting the hours until I could head home and load the family into the vehicle and begin a fun trip to Sandusky.

  There was nothing enjoyable about my summer day. Or my life in general.

  I cut across a condo development along the shore and began walking east. I angled south until I crossed the train tracks. I heard the train horn and glanced at my watch. The eleven-thirty train was approaching. I forgot which direction that one went. I saw the break in the wood line south of me and headed there.

  As I made it into the woods, I heard the train pass behind me. I kept going north until I saw the break where the backyard of the abandoned post office off Palmer appeared.

  Data 7

  11:15 a.m.

  Dumping Anka’s body had been rather easy. Dumping was the wrong word. Storing her body had been rather easy.

  Sam knew of an abandoned government building at Sheldon Marsh State Park, located off Columbus Road several miles east of the campground. Being a local, he knew a lot of obscure places throughout the area.

  That was a major gap with the Romanians’ operation. They lacked local resources who understood the area’s culture and geography. I was somewhat useful, as I could rapidly look up information and process it, but that wasn’t the same in-depth knowledge Sam possessed as a townie. He also had relationships with shady locals that allowed him to cut corners and acquire goods and services that outsiders could not easily obtain. The loss of Sam as a criminal jack-of-all-trades was a serious impediment to Daniela’s operation.

  The building selected to store Anka’s body was located on the small peninsula at the northernmost section of the park. I researched the building to learn more about its dimensions, condition, original purpose, and how long it was abandoned, but the internet lacked any useful information. It may have been owned by some defense agency at some point and abandoned decades ago following the end of the cold war.

  According to the satellite image on an online map, the building was still intact. Sam mentioned it was surrounded by a barbed-wire fence, which made it more appealing to hide a body long term.

  There was a paved footpath that ran from Columbus Road to the building, with woods, fields, and wetlands surrounding it. The park attracted a fair amount of birdwatchers and fitness freaks, but it didn’t draw a high volume of visitors like the other parks that offered long stretches of public beach access.

  There were beaches on either side of the peninsula, but they were each only a few hundred feet long and surrounded by private property with plenty of “no trespassing” signs. Beach visitors would not want to haul their stuff a mile on foot to reach these unimpressive little stretches of beach, since more convenient beach access was available throughout the Sandusky area. The location was relatively isolated, but not so isolated that activity in the area would draw attention.

  If the body wasn’t discovered during the tourist season, it would likely not be discovered until well after winter. Hopefully, only bones would remain by the time she was found years into the future. If ever.

  Sam and Viktor had transported the tote to the peninsula after dark on Saturday. The body had done a lot of traveling that day. Viktor and Sullivan had collected her from a duplex rental on Put-In-Bay Island after a prostitution engagement with two Johns from Columbus had gone wrong. They transported the body in a van, took a ferry back to the mainland, and relocated her to a warehouse.

  She concluded what was believed to be her final journey on Randy’s fifty-foot luxury yacht. Sam had anchored a half-mile offshore, and they used a dinghy to bring the body ashore.

  They didn’t want to damage the fence around the building lot, so they found a section that ran through sand and dug a hole beneath it. They slid the tote through and squirmed through themselves, which was no easy task for a big man like Sam. They broke into the building and placed the tote in a storage closet.

  The problem with this plan would be if the body had to be relocated. Given the deaths of Randy, Sam, and Viktor, the availability of resources to relocate the body was limited. We no longer had legal access to yachts and dinghies, although those assets were docked at a marina until Randy’s estate was settled. Not that illegality would ever give Daniela pause.

  Daniela wanted the body relocated tonight. She no longer saw the value of Brady Sullivan. The root of that mindset was the uncertainty of remaining in the country after her employment ended with the amusement park in the fall. She had a very short-term view of her operations, and cultivating a data theft scheme with Sullivan would take too long.

  At the same time, she couldn’t have him lurking around the area and plotting against her. In all likelihood, he was holed up in some motel in Sandusky, trying to figure out how to reverse his luck. Brady was a smart guy, and Daniela knew she had to take him off the board if she wanted to go about running her criminal enterprise unimpeded.

  The plan was to relocate the body to the back of Sullivan’s truck, which was last parked on a side street a few blocks off Columbus Road, east of the causeway. I doubted Sullivan knew that I located his truck. He had an OnStar service subscription, a General Motors vehicle monitoring service, which included GPS location tracking. I’m sure he never even considered it when he was trying to pull his “stay off the radar” maneuvers.

  I was able to hack in and track his movements, which only consisted of relocating the truck to a different block in the vicinity every few days. If he was staying within walking distance of the truck, I had his motel narrowed down to a few nearby. Then again, Sullivan was a recreational runner and could also be staying a fair distance from the truck locations. If I provided those locations to the Romanians, they could probably catch him within a day or two.

  “Yo, are you ready to make the rounds?” a voice asked, jolting me out of my thoughts. Vaughn had pulled up alongside me as I stood by the security booth, and I hadn’t even noticed.

  “Uh, yeah, sure,” I said, walking around to the passenger side of the work cart. We took off, heading north. I had to jump out and collect the garbage bags at several campsites.

  As we approached the fishing pond, Vaughn looked around. A few campers were fishing, and an elderly man was walking a dog by the trail. Vaughn accelerated and went up a hill along the pond, heading toward the train tracks.

  “Where are we going?” I asked, looking around warily. He ignored me.

  The cart labored up the hill to the tracks, where Vaughn straightened it out and headed west. I began to sweat a little. What was this? I had never ridden a work cart up on the tracks before, there was no reason for campground employees to be there.

  After a few hundred feet, he pulled off to the left and continued about ten yards away from the tracks. He pulled out the key and got out.

  “Follow me,” he said and nodded toward the wood line to the south. I didn’t move.

  “What is this, Vaughn? My ear is hurting,” I said.

  He crossed his arms. “Do I need to drag you out of that cart, Data?” he asked, cocking his head to the side.

  Nothing good would result in following him into the woods. But he could force me to go if I resisted. It would be impossible for me to outrun him; I wouldn’t make it ten feet. I got out of the cart and walked over.

  “What is this about?” I asked.

  He turned and started walking toward the woods, periodically looking over his shoulder to maintain a small gap of about five feet between us.

  We entered the woods. Is this where I get killed?

  We walked along a path, occasionally getting hit by tree branches. Vaughn had to duck a lot more than I did and cursed a few times when he was unable to avoid contact. He mumbled something about how a brother doesn’t need to be tromping around out in the woods.

  A clearing emerged ahead, and I recognized the back of the abandoned post office on Palmer. There was a breach in the chain-link fence, and we squeezed through.

  “Travis is going to be missing us soon,” I protested, but he kept walking. You would expect he would have walked behind me; it showed how harmless he actually believed I was.

  The large metal rear door to the building was propped open by a cinder block, and he stopped, motioning for me to go inside. It was dark, but there was enough sunlight for us to see.

  I followed him along the dusty hallway, maneuvering around random pieces of debris. The temperature felt fifteen degrees hotter inside, and the sweating immediately began. The walls were tagged with random spray-paint graffiti.

  Vaughn pointed to the right, and we emerged into the public lobby. The sun was attempting to illuminate the interior through the front windows and glass door, but the dust dampened the brightness.

  It was a small area, with what was once a self-service island in the middle used for customers to complete forms and envelopes. There were two service desks, which had rear exits to the storage and shipping areas. It was all dilapidated and dusty now, having been abandoned for years.

  Brady Sullivan was standing behind the nearest counter. My heart skipped and I felt nauseated.

  “Hi, Henry. You’ve been really busy. Too busy to meet with me but not too busy to disseminate my blackmail photo to the world. Adding my wife and my kids’ school was a nice touch.”

  I was sweating profusely and breathing heavily from the journey through the woods. Plus, the temperature was high within this building, and there was little ventilation.

  “Sorry. I really am sorry. I know you don’t believe that. They threatened my grandma. They threatened me.”

  Brady nodded, looking over at Vaughn. Why is Vaughn involved?

  “It is great that you do your job under duress so thoroughly. Like you couldn’t have made mistakes in the emails and had most of them bounce. Would they have even noticed?” he asked angrily.

  He was right. I could have done that. I showed Daniela the email list, but she wouldn’t have been able to discern if the email addresses were valid. Her tech skills were almost nonexistent.

  “I know. I know, I’m sorry. I have already taken a beating from Alexander. I can’t hear out of my left ear,” I said.

  “What happened to the whole ‘call me Henry’ mantra from Trailer Alpha the other night? You sure as shit are ‘Data’ through and through. You should own it,” he said. Sullivan shook his head and sighed. “I get it. Randy threatened you, and you did whatever he asked. Now it’s the Romanians. Apparently, all the tech skills in the world can’t seem to keep you out of deep shit, Henry. You ever think about turning those skills toward attacking the people who are threatening you instead of amassing more victims like me?”

  I nodded. He was right. We had a similar talk in Trailer Alpha Tuesday morning. With Randy and Sam gone, I was supposed to be free. But circumstances had conspired to keep me shackled to criminals.

  “What are we doing here, Mr. Sullivan?” I asked, glancing at Vaughn. The big man was sweating and breathing heavily from the march through the woods, standing there quietly with his arms crossed. The heat was stifling.

  “We are gonna figure out how to resolve this once and for all. You ruining my life by releasing my picture and trying to burn down my trailer has escalated the situation. Killing the Holderbaums was quite a snafu, there, Henry,” he said, shaking his head. “It has been a hectic few days trying to avoid Sheriff Minelli, the crooked cop you all have on the payroll.”

  “I didn’t have anything to do with anyone’s trailer getting arsoned.”

  “They are your people. Why distinguish you from them? Group punishment is a thing. If I had it to do over, you would have been a passenger in the Taj when it was dragged along behind that train,” he said with a hint of a smile.

  So, he was talking freely in front of Vaughn?

  “What does Vaughn have to do with this?” I asked, embarrassed by the shakiness of my voice.

  “What did you think would happen when you all attacked me? That I was just gonna lie down and take it or go along with this bullshit like you and Patrick? Get the fuck out of here. Y’all are some bad people. Poisoning Brady’s daughter, blackmailing him, burning down RVs and killing old people, killing Mike Clemmons in his sleep. Wasn’t it a wake-up call when Randy, Sam, Viktor, and Chuck got killed? You wanna keep marchin’ down this path, Data?”

  Russ 4

  1:20 p.m.

  I hung up with the nurse, more confused than ever. A few minutes later, the video arrived on my phone. I watched it three times.

  So, the big Romanian guy walked out of a hospital room. Alexander Stoica. It appeared to be the same hospital room Mike Clemmons coded in. And he left a bloodstained pillowcase behind.

  Stoica was being treated for injuries from a motorcycle accident. If I believed the nurse, it was just a ruse to get an ambulance ride to the hospital and throttle the comatose Clemmons. That seemed farfetched.

  I was sitting in my squad car on the west side of the causeway, partially concealed by a large digital sign welcoming park visitors. Welcome to Gravity Junction. Here is a speeding ticket for two hundred dollars for going ten over the speed limit.

  I would have to write a ticket soon, since I had been watching the people speed without reacting. Returning to the precinct with zero ticket revenue was a big no-no at the Sandusky PD.

  Getting pulled from the campground cases was painful. If Minelli was a more competent sheriff, we may have made more progress and hung on to the cases. Instead, the state boys were running it out of a conference room at the Marriott off Milan Street while it was back to the garden-variety tourist law-enforcement crap for me.

  The state oversaw the investigations, and yet the crimes continued. Two more dead in an RV fire this morning. A campground employee saw Sullivan outside in the area around the time of the fire. But he did live next door, so I wasn’t sure how that was particularly damning. Regardless, he had been actively avoiding us, so it was unclear to me how Sullivan figured into all of this.

  I took in a mouthful of cold coffee, gritted my teeth, swished it around, and swallowed it. Awful.

  I had nervous energy. I didn’t want to hide along the causeway and issue tickets; I wanted to do real police work.

  The memory of being inside Randy Gorey’s camper suddenly returned, and I physically shuddered. I had nightmares about it last night. Floating bodies in a dark camper filled with murky lake water. The stuff of bad horror films, and yet it was total nonfiction.

  Two men dead in the camper. A third washed ashore on the beach, the third being Viktor Vulpe, a Romanian park worker.

 

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