Chapter 85 - The Trap on Route 9
"Thomas, are you hurt?" I demanded, standing up from the table.
"I’m bruised, but I’m on my feet," Thomas panted through the phone, the sirens growing deafeningly loud. "The state troopers are searching my trunk right now. They were looking for the envelope, Marcus. When they didn't find the receipts in my car, the lead trooper called someone on a private line and said, *'The package isn't with the brother. Bring the Scituate unit in.'*"
My heart hit my throat.
"Marcus?" Eleanor asked, noticing the shift in my posture.
"Hang up, Thomas. Don't say another word," I ordered, disconnecting the call and shoving the phone into my pocket.
I turned to Eleanor. "They tracked my cell ping. They have a unit coming here right now."
The old woman didn't flinch. She had lived forty years with the dread of this day. She calmly reached behind the coat rack by the door and pulled out an old wool shawl, draping it over her shoulders.
"The marsh path behind my garden leads to the harbor master's dock," she said, her voice completely steady. "My nephew runs the winter clam skiff out of Scituate Harbor. He doesn't answer to state troopers, and he knows how to navigate the inlets to Quincy without touching a paved road."
"I can't leave you here to face them," I said.
"Marcus, I am an eighty-one-year-old retired court clerk with heart failure," Eleanor said, looking at me with fierce dignity. "What are they going to do? Put me in a cell? William Holbrook wouldn't dare let me sit on a witness stand. But you—if they catch you with those papers, you will never see the inside of a courtroom. Move!"
She grabbed her notary logbook, shoved it into a canvas tote bag, and pushed me toward the back kitchen door.
We stepped out into the freezing Atlantic gale. The marsh grass was flattened by the howling north wind, the mud slick with half-frozen brackish water. A hundred yards away, through the thick sea fog, I saw the flashing blue lights of two unmarked SUVs turning off the main highway onto Eleanor's lane.
"Go!" Eleanor whispered, pointing toward a low wooden dock protruding into the tidal channel.
I ran low through the reeds, the salt water soaking through my leather boots, freezing my shins. My lungs burned against the cold air as I reached the weathered pilings.
A thirty-foot wooden commercial skiff was idling against the bumper tires, diesel exhaust sputtering grey into the mist. A burly man in yellow oilskins stood at the helm, his face weathered by decades of winter fishing.
"Aunt Eleanor called five minutes ago," the fisherman shouted over the engine roar. "Get below the deck boards! Now!"
I scrambled over the gunwale, sliding down into the fish hold smelling of brine, crushed ice, and cod. I pulled the wooden hatch cover three-quarters shut, leaving just a sliver of grey daylight.
Thirty seconds later, the boat surged forward, the twin diesels roaring as the bow cut through the rough swells of the harbor channel.
Through the narrow slit, I looked back at the shore.
Two men in black tactical gear were standing on Eleanor's back porch. Eleanor was sitting calmly in a white wicker chair on the lawn, her hands folded over her canvas bag, watching the tide roll in.
One of the men brought a radio to his mouth, then looked out across the grey water toward our wake.
I pulled out my tablet, removed the SIM card, snapped the plastic chip in half, and dropped it into the bilge water.
I was completely off the grid.
A fugitive on the run from a federal warrant signed by the very judge who had orchestrated the murder of my uncle and the ruin of my father.
I opened the manila envelope inside my coat. The four 1985 wire receipts were intact. The silver key to the Worcester sub-basement rested against my ribs.
Holbrook thought he had cornered me. He thought that by painting me as a criminal on the run, he could invalidate anything I said to the press or the appellate court.
He had forgotten the fundamental rule of forensic accounting: *You can discredit the auditor, but you cannot delete the ledger once it enters the clearing stream.*
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"Take me to the Neponset River bridge," I called up to the fisherman through the deck grate. "I have a delivery to make in Boston."
***
