Execute The Office
Chapter One...
For three days the category five hurricane had churned the seas off the coast of Charleston, South Carolina, like a playground bully hurling threats at timid playmates. As gale winds mounted, tourists and vacationers jammed the roadways leading west, away from the angry squall. Business owners and residents boarded up windows and tied down outdoor furniture. Some prepared to leave with what belongings they could cram into their cars and trucks. Others, old salts who had grown up weathering the periodic turbulences, planned to stay. Fear ruled emotions of some, opportunity drove others.
During the predawn hours of the fourth day, a warm October morning, the nautical terror attacked with a vengeance. Tidal swells hurtled the rock walls of the Battery. The wind wailed, and palmetto trees bowed as if in prayer to the sea god, Neptune. Savage winds sucked stately antebellum homes off their foundations, spitting them out in pieces all across the Lowcountry. Two-hundred-year-old buildings along Meeting Street, all having weathered lesser assaults, rocked and began to crumble. The sides of a popular seafood eatery split open like a flounder gutted with a fillet knife.
When
the wind subsided some four hours later, the sun peeked from behind darkened
clouds, revealing the extent of the disaster. The once vibrant port city,
a historical pearl of the South, revealed devastation unparalleled since William
Tecumseh Sherman's fiery march through the Carolinas near the end of the Civil
War. Shards of glass poked from the sandy soil like porcupine quills. Splintered
lumber floated in brackish pools. Broken brick and severed roofing littered
courtyards and streets. Out in the harbor, swamped pleasure boats sank slowly
out of sight, leaving a greasy rainbow of oil and gas glistening on the now
calm waterway's surface.
Jefferson
Lee waked slowly through the melee of storm victims and their rescue personnel,
toting his bulky television camera on his shoulder, shaking his head in disbelief.
Steam rose all around him as the sun turned Church Street into one long asphalt
griddle. He wore a blue bandanna tied around his shaven brown head to stop
the sweat from leaking into his eyes. A black mesh T-shirt stretched tightly
over his muscular chest, and cutoff denim shorts bulged across the rock hard
thighs of the former NFL wide receiver. Thick soled brogan boots protected
his feet from nails protruding from broken boards hidden under carpets of
windblown sand. Born 31 years before, just south of Charleston, he had experienced
his share of storms and their destructive aftermath, but none the likes of
what he witnessed now.
"Over there!" Cassie O'Connor's voice pealed, ripe with urgency. "That old church steeple's about to fall. Get a shot."
Jefferson jerked his camera around and peered through the viewfinder. He focused in on the cross at the top of the steeple listing hard to one side of the church's precipitous roof. Just as he did, a sharp crack flushed a flock of white birds from a nearby tree. The resultant loud fluttering noise drowned the commotion caused by nearby rescue personnel.
The steeple wobbled, thrust forward, then slammed down onto the roof and slid like a sled on an icy hill. It fell over the roof's edge, landing with a board-ripping crash on a row of centuries-old tombstones in the graveyard below.
"You get that? Tell me you got that!" Cassie shot around Jefferson for a closer look.
"I got it." The words slid out of his mouth like molasses pouring from a mason jar. Jefferson glanced away from the eyepiece as the diminutive, New Jersey-born, auburn haired woman dressed in khaki culottes and a navy silk blouse ran by. "You shoulda worn somethin' a mite more rugged," he said.
The five-foot-two-inch reporter from CNN in Atlanta didn't bother so much as a nod back at her six-foot-eight-inch cameraman. "I'm fine. Just keep shooting." She jumped over a fallen streetlamp and ran through ankle-deep water toward the wrought-iron gate of the stone wall surrounding the church graveyard.
"You'd
better slow down, or you'll break your fool neck." Jefferson grimaced,
shaking his head as he watched the woman he used to work with in Columbia,
South Carolina. She was impetuous, with a volatile Irish temper. She was impatient,
sometimes arrogant, and often irritating. But he respected her journalistic
instincts, the determination and fearlessness required to break a controversial
hard-hitting story. He had witnessed her daring firsthand, when she took on
powerful people to uncover a conspiracy involving a drug cartel, local and
federal politicians, and a police officer's killer who had escaped from a
neighboring county jail. She revealed the entire plot on her station's national
affiliate and earned an invitation to move to Atlanta to report for one of
the most-watched television news networks in the world.
Once she got her big break she never looked back.
Now everyone who watched CNN knew Cassie O'Connor, and Jefferson felt flattered that she had requested to be partnered with him again, to cover the aftermath of the state's worst hurricane disaster. He chuckled to himself. Flattered but wary. If he could only keep her from getting them both killed. That always seemed to be the challenge with her.
Jefferson wiped the sweat from his brow as he watched Cassie high-stepping, wearing only leather tennis shoes to protect her feet as she splashed through the dingy water covering Church Street. "If a nail rams through those soft rubber soles into your dainty foot, I want to be the one to jam that tetanus needle in your ass."
As
usual she paid no attention to his warning. "Get some footage of the
wreckage." She looked back with a glare of impatience, then turned and
craned her neck to peer into the graveyard.
Before Jefferson could lumber up behind her, Cassie leaned across the wall and pointed. "What's that?"
He lowered the camera, holding it by the handle the same way he would a suitcase, and stepped up behind the reporter. "What's what?"
"Over there, near that section of roof, next to the pile of palmetto branches. Is that a chest or something?" Cassie pulled on the old gate, but debris had collected at its base, preventing her from pulling it open.
Jefferson surveyed the area where the eager reporter pointed. He saw the fallen tree and the piece of collapsed roof. He also saw what looked like an ornamental box sitting amid the rubble. "Pirate's booty! Vast, me hardy, ye landlubber may have discovered Blackbeard's treasure." He let loose with a thunderous, deep laugh as he eased his camera on top of the wall.
"Smart
ass! It might be important."
He propped his left hand on the wall and vaulted over the top. "Yes'm," he said in a tone of subservience, "I'll check it out." A low grunt escaped his mouth as he landed. He held his hand high in the air and waved. "Hang tight, Miz Patience. I be right back."
Cassie rolled her eyes, planted her fists against her hips. "I've told you before, don't use that movie-slave bullshit on me."
Jefferson laughed harder but stopped abruptly as he got closer to the box. His eyes narrowed, but he wasn't looking at the treasure chest Cassie had spotted. Something under the roof caught his attention. That's Peculiar, he thought.
He kicked away a palmetto frond with his size-fifteen brogan and knelt down by the piece of roof. He pushed away loose shingles. His features expressed surprise. "Get a cop over here." He popped back to his feet and spun around to look at Cassie. Before the words were out of his mouth, he saw her scrambling over the wall.
"What is it?" she said, breathless, as she jumped down and ran toward him.
"You might want to stop right there," Jefferson said, holding up his large hand. "There is a foot under here, and there's a very dead body connected to it."
[Home] [About The Author] [Order Info] [Links] [Events] [The Parlor] [The Study] [Books]
