20. Jaxson
20
Jaxson
J osiah Sanford’s house is on the outskirts of Charleston, close to the ports. As I drive up the gravel road, I take note of the fact that the place looks like it hasn’t been lived in for ages. Not just because of all the things lying around in disrepair, but everything looks untouched. Like no one has driven up the gravel in a long time. Or moved the broom to sweep the porch or opened the shed to get a tool out or another.
“Just how unable to get around was Sanford?” I ask Serenity.
“Just heard it was hard for him to make the drive all the way into the city for meetings. But I heard he still got around when it came to taking care of his house. Priest Ashton even said he one day had to make the old man sit down because he was repairing his roof just a few weeks ago,” Serenity answers.
“He certainly did a good job of it,” J mutters, taking note of the same thing I have from a distance. The roof is clearly not repaired based on the missing slats and shingles.
I stop the car right next to the steps leading up to the porch. Before I can even tell J and Serenity to stay in the car, they’re already out .
“Is anyone home?” Serenity asks, about to make her way up the steps until I stop her so I can take note of the undisturbed pollen all over the porch.
“It doesn’t look like anyone’s been in or out of this house in a while,” I say.
“One way to find out still,” Serenity says, brushing past me to go up to the door and knock.
I don’t expect anyone to answer, but allow Serenity to wait for one as I start casing the entire property for more information before I break into the house and look around. Everything continues to indicate that no one has been here for a while, and not just that no one has been here, but also that the place has been cleaned out a long time ago. It’s possible that Sanford has just moved. But if that’s the case, the Sovereignty would have known, and the databases would have been updated by Serenity herself. The Sovereignty notoriously keeps its records for both active and non-active members updated. And if Priest Ashton knew that, he was sworn to let the treasury department know to update the records, especially if he was doing personal check-ins every week.
After finishing casing the outside, I inspect the house to see if there are any traps or alarms. But upon finding the front door open, I realize it’s too late.
I walk into the house, finding Serenity and J inspecting different parts of the definitely unlived-in house if the settled dust and the sheets on the furniture are anything to go by. I go over to J first to grab his hand before he can touch the refrigerator.
He jumps and says, “You could have been a little louder. ”
“Let’s go,” I snap.
“But we just got here,” Serenity says as she continues to inspect, having the good sense to at least not touch anything.
“And you might have set off some alarm breaking into the house,” I say, dragging J behind me and expecting Serenity to follow if she doesn’t want to get left behind.
“We didn’t hear anything,” Serenity says.
I don’t deign to answer her statement. Forget her being a wealth of information. Forget that it would have been unnecessarily forceful, and I would have had to mitigate the fallout afterward. I should have locked Serenity in my suite with J until I returned. No wonder her father is already bald at his age.
I snatch the door open and flick the child lock just in case. But before I can throw both Serenity and J into the car, a car speeds up the driveway and stops right behind us.
A woman jumps out of the car with a rifle and points it at us.
“Who the hell are you?” she shouts.
Normally, a rifle would be no cause for alarm. If she really intended to shoot it, she would have turned off the safety. It’s an intimidation method more than anything. However, I’ve got two kids with me, and in the event that she does change her intentions to shooting, I’d have to make sure they don’t get shot, make sure I don’t get shot, and get the gun from her. With more things to do, one of those things isn’t going to have enough of my attention, increasing my chance of failure in one or more of the departments. But that’s a worst-case scenario .
Right now, she doesn’t want to shoot, and I’m going to make sure it stays that way.
“Get in the car,” I order, hoping that both kids listen. If there is a Supreme Force, it answers my wish, and the two climb into the car without any more prompting. I close the door and say to the woman, “Hello.”
“Who. The hell. Are. You?” she demands again.
“I’m a representative from the Sovereignty to check on—”
I hear the click of the safety being removed and hope that J and Serenity have the good sense to duck behind the seats.
“Fuck the Sovereignty. It’s your fault my father is dead,” she yells. “You fuckers sucked him dry, and then when he needed you the most, cast him to the side. We tried to get in touch with that last rep for months before my father passed, and neither you nor your Sovereignty cared.”
“What was his name?” I ask.
“Shouldn’t you know?” she snaps.
Yes. But I need to know exactly what she knows, and I can’t do that by showing my hand.
“I want to make sure we’re on the same page.”
“I don’t know. It’s… something with an A.”
She doesn’t know Ashton’s name. And I’m not going to tell her.
“Asher Mines?” I ask.
“That sounds…” she trails off before saying, “Yeah. Yeah… I think that was it.”
It wasn’t. But the last thing I need is for her to go digging after this .
“I certainly understand your frustration. I am too. I took over all Mr. Mines's wellness cases after he was investigated for embezzlement. Long story short, he fled before we could finish getting statements from his victims and report him to the proper authorities. Your father was among those of our senior Sovereign members he was assigned to look out for. We had no idea he was sick, let alone that he died,” I explain calmly. Then, taking an educated guess, I say, “You’re his daughter?”
“Yeah. Jackee,” she corrects as she lowers her gun halfway.
“Jamie. Graham,” I lie because one search online of my first name plus the Sovereignty would pull up exactly who I am, and I don’t need her asking the right questions to the wrong people just in case she gets curious.
“I apologize for trespassing on your father’s home. Perhaps there’s a place we can go to talk?” I ask.
She lowers her gun all the way before saying, “I know a place.”
The place turns out to be some old diner. I keep an eye on Serenity and J sitting at a table for two near us with their heads bent toward each other as they talk over their burgers and fries. Not concerned about what they’re talking about, I continue to idly listen to Jackee as she reminisces about her father before he found the Sovereignty. How he spent every spare minute of his time with her and her siblings. Took them on trips. To movies. Amusement parks. And then he joined the Sovereignty, and all of that changed .
“It was like I didn’t know my dad. Every spare moment was given to the Sovereignty. Every extra dollar, and he demanded that we be as dedicated to it as he was,” Jackee spat and then looks up at me from her coffee. “What do you have to say about that, Mr. Graham?”
If she’s waiting for me to get defensive, to justify this behavior the same way her father did, giving her a reason to dismiss me, she’s going to be waiting a long time. I have enough self-control not to rise to her bait.
Instead, I say, “Just like in all religions, there are those who take the doctrine to an extreme that was never intended to be taken. Mr. Mines was one of those people. And he certainly encouraged people he was in touch with to be more extreme than even he was. The Sovereignty is meant to supplement and enhance the lives of its members. Give them a community and more balance. Not completely suck them dry,” I finish, parroting the lies that have been indoctrinated in me since I was a child. The prepared responses to give to anyone who questioned the good of the Sovereignty and stopped anyone from asking further questions.
And just like that, with a little sympathy for her emotions and grievances, the fight goes out of her in one long exhale.
“While I don’t condone it, at the very least, your father’s extremism shows his dedication to the Sovereignty and its mission. If there’s anything I can do to—”
Jackee huffs. “Dedication? Isn’t that an understatement? Even in pain and barely able to get out of bed, every month, he took his old trailer down to the ports to pick up shipments for the Sovereignty. ”
“He was. According to Mines’s records, he made the trip…” I trail off, pretending to try to remember. Then I take out my phone. “Hold on. It’s in my cloud. Just let me—”
“Every third Friday. Eleven pm sharp. By himself to the North Charleston Terminal. Then all the way to Chicago and back. By himself,” Jackee says, absently offering the information.
I still pretend to look through my phone and afterward say, “Yes. That’s it.”
“What was so important that he made that trip so religiously anyway?” Jackee asks.
“You’re not going to like the answer,” I say conversationally as I look down at my coffee with a shake of my head and a fake laugh for added effect.
“What?” she asks, giving me a dry look.
“It was just seafood. For one of our restaurants,” I respond just as dryly. “Apparently, Asher Mines thought it was silly to pay someone for it when you could just get a Sovereign to do it for free. And seeing as your father couldn’t attend as regularly as he could anymore, he jumped at the chance.”
She huffs a laugh. “Of course.”
“I’m sorry he spent his last days killing himself for the Sovereignty instead of spending time with his family,” I say. I hold out my hand, gesturing for her phone. She hands it to me. “I know that money won’t make up for the time and memories lost, but if you need anything, call this number. In the Sovereignty, we believe that a Sovereign’s reward for their good work should not go wasted. It may not have seemed like it, but he was doing what he thought was right for a better world for himself and his children. The least we owe is to make sure that his children see some benefit from that.”
I hand her back the phone with the number to one of my many managers, secretaries, and assistants—one of my handpicked ones and not the one that my father tries to use to spy on me. I doubt she’ll call. People like her rarely do after things like this, having wanted nothing more than someone to listen to them and validate their grievances. But in the event that she does call, whoever answers will know that the only way for her to have gotten this number is for me to have given it to her and will handle whatever it is that she requests. There’s nothing having billions of dollars in cash and assets won’t buy access to.
I gesture for J and Serenity to get to-go boxes for the rest of their food. Once it’s all packed, I pay for the meals and the coffees, leaving a one-hundred dollar tip behind before leaving Jackee in the diner.
“So?” J asks, running to keep up with me, with Serenity barely keeping up behind as the wind blows her long coily hair in her face.
I don’t answer until we’re safely in the car and almost to her house.
“Josiah Sanford is dead,” I answer.
“No, he’s not. Priest Maines does wellness checks on him weekly. He talks about it all the time,” Serenity says.
“Well, either he’s lying or Josiah’s daughter is, and I’m inclined to believe the daughter,” I answer bluntly.
“I believe women,” Serenity says with a shrug. “So I’m not arguing with you. ”
“He was also picking up a shipment every third Friday of the month and driving it all the way to Chicago,” I explain.
“To Chicago?” Serenity says with a look of excitement and awe. “So is someone taking funds from the Sovereignty to fund their drug trafficking or something?”
“I don’t know. The only way to find out is to wait on the next shipment,” I reply.
“But yesterday was the third Friday. The next third Friday isn’t for another month,” J points out.
“Yes. That is usually how that works,” I respond dryly.
“Then what do we do in the meantime?” Serenity asks.
“In the meantime,” I say, stopping the car in front of Serenity’s house, “you’re going to go home and forget about this. If you try to tell anyone, I’ll lie that I have no clue what you’re talking about. And you know very well who your father is going to believe.”
Serenity huffs and sits back in her seat, knowing very well that I’m right. For all that Sovereigns believe that there’s an impassive force that controls everything and makes rules for how we should live our lives and will destroy the world and make it anew with only a few chosen to survive, nothing will make them believe the word of a fourteen-year-old girl who already has a personal vendetta against the man she’d be accusing. They’d certainly never believe her over the word of the Oracle’s own son, no matter what evidence she could get her hands on.
“Come on,” I say, gesturing for her and J to follow me out of the car so I can walk her to the door and explain why she’s been with me all day to her mother .
Sweet-talking Serenity’s parents out of being annoyed with Serenity and me also distracts me from the fact that I too have to just wait for four weeks to pass. Hopefully, my father has no more surprises for Lauressa and me in the meantime.