Chapter 4 - The Mourning Monsters
The drizzle had settled into a thick, clammy sea fog by ten o'clock the following morning, cloaking the banks of Savannah Creek in a shroud of gray mist. Along the muddy shoulder of the coastal road, three emergency rescue trucks from the county sheriff’s department idled with their amber warning beacons flashing in lazy, rhythmic circles. A crowd of local reporters, maritime union workers, and curious onlookers stood behind the yellow crime-scene tape, watching the heavy diesel boom of a county crane slowly hoist the crushed, dripping carcass of our black SUV from the dark waters. From the tinted window of an unmarked utility van parked half a mile up the ridge, Tobias and I watched through high-powered binoculars. Beside me, Tobias adjusted a directional listening receiver linked to a covert parabolic microphone Old Dan had planted in the brush near the command tent an hour before sunrise. On the riverbank below, Garrett delivered a performance worthy of an Academy Award. He stood with his shoulders slumped in utter defeat, wearing an unzipped black down jacket, his face pale and haggard, his eyes red-rimmed from what appeared to be hours of violent weeping. When the crane swung the battered vehicle onto the flatbed trailer, revealing the shattered rear window and the empty interior choked with river weeds, Garrett covered his face with both hands and sank to his knees in the red Georgia clay. "Rosalind!" he cried out, his voice cracking with theatrical agony as three television news cameras zoomed in on his trembling frame. "Please God, no! Not Rose! Not Tobias!" Penelope was at his side instantly. She wore a modest black wool maternity dress beneath a heavy shawl, her face completely free of makeup, presenting the tragic image of a devoted half sister shattered by grief. She knelt beside Garrett in the mud, wrapping her slender arms around his broad shoulders, burying her face into his neck while whispering words of manufactured comfort that the microphones eagerly captured for the midday broadcast. "We have to be strong, Garrett," Penelope sobbed for the cameras, her voice trembling with practiced fragility. "They're in God's hands now. The current... the sheriff says the undercurrent was running ten miles an hour toward the ocean. We have to accept that they're gone." "Cut," Tobias murmured beside me, his thumb flicking a switch on the audio console. "Listen to the secondary channel. Dan tapped the private cellular booster on Garrett's belt." The static on the headset cleared, replaced by the crisp, low audio of Garrett’s voice, spoken directly into Penelope’s ear while their bodies remained locked in their tearful, public embrace. “Did the county coroner sign the preliminary missing-persons certificate?” Garrett whispered, his tone utterly devoid of the weeping tremor he was displaying to the reporters three feet away. “He signed it twenty minutes ago,” Penelope murmured back against his collar, her lips barely moving beneath the folds of her shawl. *“Under maritime disaster statutes, an unrecovered body in an active shipping channel allows for an expedited declaration of presumptive death within seventy-two hours if structural vehicular entrapment is established. The attorney has the probate petition ready for the judge’s signature on Tuesday morning.”* “What about the union delegates?” Garrett asked, his hand gently patting her rounded stomach as if comforting his unborn child. *“Old Dan’s faction is grumbling at the south yard. They're demanding to see the maintenance records for the steering assembly.”* “Let them grumble,” Penelope hissed softly. “By Tuesday afternoon, the board meets. With Rosalind and Tobias declared deceased, my emergency petition transfers controlling interest of Sullivan Maritime to me as the sole living heir. And my first official act as chairwoman will be executing the merger with Thorne Heavy Logistics. Arthur already has the overseas buyers waiting in Charleston.” Through the binoculars, I watched Garrett pull back from the embrace. He dabbed at his dry eyes with a pristine white linen handkerchief, turned to the gathering crowd of reporters, and cleared his throat with an expression of stoic, heartbreaking resilience. "My wife, Rosalind, was the soul of Savannah," Garrett announced into the cluster of news microphones, his voice carrying clearly across the water. "Her entire life was dedicated to preserving her family's maritime heritage and caring for her brave, disabled brother. Tobias was an inspiration to every man who ever worked a crane on these docks. To lose them both... to lose them in the very river they loved so dearly... is a tragedy that words cannot measure." He paused, looking directly into the camera lens with a solemn, piercing sincerity that turned my stomach to liquid bile. "I promise the people of this city, and I promise the men and women who build our ships, that their sacrifice will not be in vain. The Sullivan name will live on. I will carry their torch forward, no matter how heavy the burden." In the van, the silence was absolute. Tobias slowly lowered his binoculars, his knuckles white against the rubber casing. "Did you hear that, Rose? He's carrying our torch." I didn't answer right away. I looked down at my hands—hands that were still raw and peeling from the cold water, the purple bruises from the wired seat belt still darkening my hip bones beneath my jeans. I felt the steady, rhythmic pulse in my throat, each beat pumping clean, untainted blood through my veins now that the nightly thallium had stopped. "He's not carrying a torch, Tobias," I said, my voice dropping into a register that made Old Dan glance back from the driver's seat with a look of fierce, grim satisfaction. "He's walking straight into an inferno. Let's go to the farmhouse. It's time to collect the receipts."
