Winston’s hand went to the handle on the car door, his other hand holding the envelope of cash, but something kept him in the car, gave him permission to wait, to come back tomorrow, to put off the apology and the errand that had sent him there. The next day, there was a truck parked in the driveway, and Winston watched an older Black man walk in and out of the house a couple of times. He didn’t know who the man was, and he thought it best to come back when Dixon’s wife was alone. The next day, the family was gone, but Winston had never forgotten Dixon’s family, and he knew that even though they had never met him, they had never been able to forget him either.
When Winston pulled up to the near-empty arrivals area at the Wilmington airport, he didn’t even have a chance to put the cruiser in park before a man stepped off the curb, opened the passenger door, and leaned inside.
“Hey,” the man said, extending his hand across the seat toward Winston. “Agent Tom Groom. Your pilot.”
Winston reached out and shook the man’s hand. The man wore a navy blue polo shirt tucked into khaki pants. He wore the standard-issue SIG holstered at his side, and he had the same standard-issue bearing of the other agents Winston had met over time, the same rigidity, the same distance and withdrawn air about him.
“Nice to meet you, Agent Groom. I’m Sheriff Winston Barnes,” he said. “I hope you didn’t wait too long.”
“Not at all,” Groom said. He lifted up an army-green duffel bag so that Winston could see it. “Mind if I toss this in the back?”
“Go ahead,” Winston said.
Groom opened the back door and set the bag on the floorboard, and then he slid onto the passenger’s seat and closed the door. He was medium height with a slender build and a full head of thick auburn hair. Something about him seemed vaguely familiar to Winston, and he considered that Groom could easily pass for one of the Kennedy brothers if not for his accent, which Winston was already trying to place.
“I just deplaned,” Groom said. He raked his fingers through his hair in an attempt to get it off his forehead, just like Winston remembered Jack Kennedy doing in the old newsreels. “Perfect timing.”
“Good,” Winston said. He pulled away from the curb. “We’ve got about an hour drive down to Oak Island.”
Tom Groom told Winston he was forty-three years old, was born outside Ames, Iowa, and joined the air force at eighteen just in time to be sent to Vietnam. During the war, he would eventually fly the military version of the same aircraft that now sat sideways on the runway at the airport in Brunswick County. “It was a C-47,” Groom said, “outfitted with mini guns. Flew ground support, dug them out when the Viet Cong came in.” Groom said that after the war, he went to college back in Iowa, and when that was over, the FBI came calling.
Winston felt Groom turn and look at him as if he were sizing him up, taking the measure of him in some way.
“Did you serve?” Groom finally asked.
“Yeah,” Winston said. “Navy in Korea.”
“I figured. You can always spot a veteran.”
“That was a long time ago.”
“I bet it doesn’t seem like it,” Groom said. “Vietnam won’t ever seem like a long time ago to me.”
“It sticks with you,” Winston said, but Winston didn’t want to talk about the past, his or Groom’s. He didn’t want to talk about war any more than anyone else who’d ever been through it.
“Are you the FBI’s aircraft specialist?” Winston asked, only half-joking.
“It seems like it sometimes,” Groom said. “Once you find your niche, it’s hard to get out of it.”
They were crossing the bridge over the Cape Fear River and heading into Brunswick County when Winston asked Groom how he knew Agents Rollins and Rountree.
“I don’t,” Groom said. “Not really, anyway, not beyond a quick talk on the phone. The teletype came into the Miami office, and we deal with downed aircraft all the time down there.”
“You ever deal with them sitting sideways on a short runway?”
“No,” Groom said. He laughed a little, the first real emotion Winston had seen him express since he’d gotten into the car. Winston felt himself relaxing. “I can’t say I’ve seen that. But if that rear landing gear can be fixed—and I think it can, based on what your airport manager told me—I believe I can get this aircraft out of your hair. If I’ve done it during monsoon season out in the jungle, I can for sure do it on a nice October morning.”
They rode in silence for a moment. Winston tapped his fingers against the steering wheel as if listening to a song in his head, but the only thing he heard was the rumble of the engine as the cruiser whipped down the winding curve of Highway 133, the swamps on either side glowing in hues of yellow in the morning light. On the left-hand side, far past the trees that obscured the view, the Cape Fear River divided Brunswick County from the city of Wilmington. Historical markers dotted the roadside, announcing the fact that settlers, slaves, and Indians had once inhabited this land over the span of centuries.
Groom broke the silence. “Mind if I smoke?” he asked.
“No, not one bit,” Winston said.
Groom reached into his breast pocket for a pack of cigarettes. Winston looked over and saw that the pack was blue and gold and featured some kind of Asian lettering on it. Groom shook one loose and lit it with a lighter that he slid back into his pocket. He took a drag, and then he rolled down the window and blew smoke from the side of his mouth.
“What brand is that?” Winston asked.
Groom kept the cigarette between his fingers, but he held it in front of him and studied it for a moment. “Hero,” he said. He took another drag and exhaled. “They’re harder than hell to get in the States, but it’s the only bad habit I brought home from the war, so it’s worth the trouble.”
“There are worse,” Winston said.
“That there are.” Groom flicked an ash out the cracked window. “You from around here?”
“No,” Winston said. “Up the road a piece, just west of Charlotte.”
“What brought you down here?”
“Oh, I don’t know,” Winston said. “Just wanted to live at the beach, I guess.”
“You fish?” Groom asked.
“No,” Winston said. “I don’t fish, and I have to tell you, I haven’t been on a boat in years, and I can’t remember the last time I set foot on the beach when it didn’t involve work.”
Groom smiled a little. He took a drag off his cigarette. “Well, I understand that,” he said. “I’ve lived in Miami almost twenty years, and I can’t recall the last time I did any of that stuff either.”
“Work keep you busy?”
“Oh, yeah,” Groom said. “Plenty of work.”
“I know you get a lot of drug planes down in South Florida,” Winston said. “I’m wondering if you’ve ever heard about one this far north.”
“It happens,” Groom said. “But up here I think they’re more likely to use boats.”
“You’re right about that,” Winston said. “You’re right about that.”