When Ghosts Come Home(18)

“No, I need to get back to work out there and talk to those reporters,” Winston said. He felt something in the room change. “Dorsey, I hope you haven’t brought me in here to tell me you’ve already been yapping at them.”

“Hell, no, Winston,” Dorsey said. “I know better than that.” He slipped his hands into his pockets and stared at his feet. Winston could hear his fingers tinkering with keys or loose change. Otherwise the room was quiet. “FBI agents are here,” he finally said.

“I figured they’d be here sooner than later,” Winston said.

“Well, I called them,” Dorsey said. He slipped his hands from his pockets and crossed his arms. “Just wanted you to hear it from me in case they mentioned it.”

“You called them?” Winston said.

Dorsey slid his hands back into his pockets. He rocked back on his heels. “Look, Winston, I know you’re coming up on a reelection, but this thing’s too big for us, for you.”

Winston closed the notepad he’d been holding, slipped it into his back pocket, and walked toward the office door. He pushed it open and stepped outside. Behind him, he heard Dorsey catch the door before it closed. Dorsey caught up with Winston, walked alongside him.

“Now listen, Winston, this is the federal government,” he said. “They can take care of this thing. There ain’t no use in ruffling feathers—” But Winston kept walking, didn’t even turn to look at him.

The first person Winston encountered on the runway was Deputy Kepler. “Sheriff,” Kepler said. He took his hat off and held it in his hands like he was entering a church for a funeral. “I tried to keep them out of the plane until you got back, but they said the investigation is being taken over, and I said—” But Winston didn’t let him finish.

“Stay here,” Winston said. “I’ll be back.”

Winston found the two agents inside the plane, one of them standing in the fuselage, and the other standing in the cockpit, looking down at the black, dusty remnants of Winston’s search for fingerprints. Winston knew them both. He stood in the open cargo doors. He cleared his throat. “Gentlemen,” he said.

Both men looked at him, but only the one standing in the fuselage smiled. Agent Avery Rollins was a few years younger than Winston, but the gray hair and gray beard made him appear older. Winston and Rollins had worked together many times over the years—mostly on cases when drugs had been brought in on boats, smugglers using the waterways and wharfs the same way marauders had used them in earlier times—and their relationship was quiet and easy, both of them understanding that the other had a job to do and knew how to do it. Rollins wore a white golf shirt and the clichéd navy blue windbreaker with the FBI badge over the breast and “FBI Special Agent” printed across the back in yellow. He had the agent’s standard SIG Sauer strapped to the leg of his tan cargo pants. The other agent, the one still standing in the cockpit, was outfitted in the exact same garb. He was Josh Rountree, a short, square man with brown hair and a closely trimmed mustache who always held himself out as being distant and aloof. Winston had never seen him smile or say a word that wasn’t tied directly to an investigation at hand. It was too hot for the agents’ jackets, especially inside the plane, but Winston saw it for what it was: a power play to broadcast to anyone who saw them that the federal government was now in charge.

“Winston,” Rollins said. The two men shook hands. “You know Agent Rountree.”

“I do,” Winston said.

Rountree turned his head, and Winston nodded hello. “Your office do this?” Rountree asked. He pointed to the fingerprinting dust that covered the cockpit.

“Yeah,” Winston said. “I did. I was the first on the scene.” Then, feeling as if he were hedging against what might come next, he said something that both surprised and shamed him. “It was dark. Didn’t quite know what we were working with.”

“You find any good prints?” Rountree asked.

“Not a one,” Winston said.

Rountree sighed and shook his head as if what he saw before him was the most disappointing thing he’d seen in days. Winston looked at Rollins, and Rollins winked and gave him a slight smile as if to encourage Winston to let go of any judgment or disappointment he may be feeling in that moment. Winston appreciated the gesture, and he did his best to smile at Rollins as if only the two of them were in on a joke about Rountree being too serious, but he knew that Rountree’s reaction would stick with him for a while.

Over the years during which he’d worked with the FBI’s local office in Wilmington, Winston had found almost all the agents to be the same, especially agents from the offices in Charlotte and Raleigh. They were outsiders hoping to move on to something bigger and better in the bureau; outsiders who looked down their noses at local law enforcement even more than they looked down their noses at locals. He’d always taken Rountree to be that kind of agent, but Rollins was different. He’d married a woman from Wilmington and had settled down years ago and raised a family.

“I heard you had a night last night,” Rollins said.

“You could say that,” Winston said. “I’ve had quite a morning too.”

“I bet,” Rollins said. He put his hands on his hips and looked around the empty airplane. “I bet.”