Chapter 33
Whelan was only partly surprised to learn that there were seventeen Michael Sullivans living in his targeted geographical area, which consisted of Georgia, Florida, and South Carolina. Of those seventeen, just six had been born between the years of 1991 and 1993, the years bracketing Hudson’s birth.
One of the Mikes (that’s how he thought of them: Mikes) was deceased, killed, as Whelan had read in the online obituary, by a rare childhood blood cancer. The other five Mikes didn’t fit the profile for the Mike he was seeking—a kid whose parents had been Saints; that is, a family wealthy enough to be a member-guest at the Saint back in July of 2002.
These Sullivans all seemed to be working-class families—or in the case of one, the product of an unmarried mother who’d gotten pregnant at the age of sixteen.
Which left him with just one Mike: Michael Thomas Sullivan, age thirty-two, who was, as luck would have it, living in a suburb of Jacksonville, Florida, which was less than a two-hour drive away from Bonaventure, Georgia.
Whelan was skittish when it came to social media. He’d occasionally check in with the guys who’d been in his unit in Afghanistan. They had a Facebook group where they’d post updates on their families, jobs, and social life, something Whelan rarely did.
But he’d learned early that social media was an invaluable research tool. To that end, he’d been cyber-stalking Michael T. Sullivan of Avondale Park for the past week. He’d learned Michael loved paddleboarding with his golden retriever Gladys, grilling out, and posing for selfies with a group of handsome, tanned men who always seemed to gather in a bar or at a beach. Michael’s BFF or “work wife” was a young brunette named Jill who worked at the same bank in downtown Jacksonville. He knew Michael lived in a fixer-upper ranch, and that he’d been slowly doing a DIY renovation of his kitchen.
On Sunday afternoon, Whelan hit the road around four, reasoning that if Michael had been out paddleboarding or beaching it with his friends, he’d probably be back home by six that evening, getting ready for a Monday workday.
The day was scorching hot, ninety-eight according to the readout on the dash of his Tahoe. But he was listening to ’80s rock on his radio and the trip was so uneventful, the traffic on I-95 so light, he managed to pull up to the curb in Avondale Park shortly before six.
Sullivan’s house was clearly the nicest on his block, with extravagant beds of pink, blue, and white New Guinea impatiens nestled in swaths of bright green asparagus fern. A porch had obviously been added on to the front of the house, supported by modernist-looking columns.
Whelan rang the doorbell and heard a deep-throated series of barks. A voice emerged from the Ring doorbell.
“Yes?”
The barks continued. “Hush, Gladys,” the voice said. “How can I help you?”
Whelan flashed what he hoped was a warm, sincere smile. Sometimes, warmth was a stretch for him. “I’m looking for Michael Thomas Sullivan?”
“That’s me,” the disembodied voice said. “Who are you?”
“Hi. Sorry to bother you. My name is Whelan, and I’m looking for the Michael Sullivan who spent time at the Saint resort in the summer of 2002.”
The door opened and a man peered out at him. He was very tanned, and bare-chested, with a mane of swept-back dark brown hair, wearing loose-fitting white linen pants. A fine gold chain hung around his neck.
“I was there that summer, but I was, like, nine. What’s this about?”
“It’s kind of a long story, and it’s hot as shit out here,” Whelan said, feeling the perspiration dripping down his back. “Would it be possible for me to come inside and talk?”
“Are you some kind of cop or something?”
“Not anymore. I can assure you, I’m legit.”
Sullivan held out his hand. “Okay. Give me your driver’s license.”
Whelan handed it over. Sullivan closed the door. A moment later, he opened the door again, snapped a photo of the visitor with his phone, and then handed Whelan’s license back. Again he closed the front door. A minute passed. Whelan heard a door opening on the side of the house. He watched while Michael Sullivan sprinted, barefoot, across his sculpted green lawn, paused in back of Whelan’s Tahoe, and snapped a photo of his license tag.
A moment later, Sullivan opened the door again. “Okay, cool. Come on in.”
“Smart,” Whelan commented, as he returned the license to his billfold. “Good for you, being so security conscious when a stranger shows up at your door.”
The interior of Michael Sullivan’s house seemed to consist of one large, airy room. The ceilings were vaulted, the back of the house consisted of a series of French doors, and everywhere there was a living jungle of vivid green plants. “Nice house, by the way.”
“You can sit there,” Sullivan said, pointing toward a low-slung kidney-shaped loveseat. “When you’ve been on as many gruesome Grindr dates as I have, you start to be careful. I mean, you could, theoretically, still kill me and eat my kidneys with some fava beans and a nice chianti, but if you do, my best friend Jill has those photos of your driver’s license and your car tag, so at least there’s that.”
The dog sat on the terrazzo floor directly in front of Whelan, who wondered if he’d encountered the only mean golden retriever in existence.
Sullivan sat down on a sofa that matched the loveseat, and tucked his legs beneath himself. He was wearing a shirt now. The dog jumped up beside him and put her head in his lap. “So. Spill the beans. Why do you want to know about my traumatic summer at the Saint, way back then?”
“What was traumatic about it?”
Sullivan waggled a finger at him. “Nuh-uh. I asked first.”
“Fair enough. That summer, my half brother and my mom and her husband rented a cottage at the Saint. And… that was the last summer of his life. I want to know why.”
“Oh. My. God!” Sullivan clutched his chest with both hands. “Are you telling me your brother was Hudson? Oh my God!”
“Half brother,” Whelan said.
“But you’re so much older. I mean, you’re, what? In your fifties?”
“Almost. My mother had me in her mid-twenties. Her first marriage.”
“You don’t look anything like Hudson. He was blond and spindly and you’re not that.”
“I’m told I look like my father’s side of the family.”
“Mmm-hmm.” Michael stared intently at his visitor. “So. Your mom. Wasn’t her name Kasey? And, Lord, what was Hudson’s dad’s name? Even at nine, I knew he was a real tight-ass.”
“Brad. His name was Brad Moorehead.”
Sullivan snapped his fingers. “Right. I remember now.”
“What else do you remember about that time? Especially the week Hudson drowned.”
The younger man squeezed his eyes shut as he tried to summon the past. “Well… I hate to speak ill of the dead, but Hudson was such an annoying little shit.” He opened his eyes and gave Whelan a rueful shrug. “Sorry, but that’s the truth. There were only a few kids around our age that summer, so we basically hung out together because there wasn’t anyone else.”
“No kids whose names you remember?” Whelan asked.
Sullivan’s face stretched into a wide grin. “Ah. Yes. There was this group of fabulous older girls—and by older, I mean they were maybe fifteen or sixteen. And when Hudson wasn’t around, these girls would let me sit with them at the pool. I was like their mascot. They let me pretend I was one of the cool kids instead of the pathetic little sissy boy I was in real life.”
“But you and Hudson were buddies, right?”
“Some of the time.”
“Tell me about that day. All of it, please,” Whelan said.
“Let me think,” Sullivan said. “Do you want something cold to drink?”
“No thanks. I’m good.”
“Just as well. I promised myself I was going on the wagon today. Okay… I think I met up with Hudson that morning at the game room. They had a jukebox in there, and a Pac-Man and a Ping-Pong table. We played Ping-Pong, but Hudson got pissed when I beat him. I remember, after I won, Hudson deliberately stomped on the Ping-Pong ball, and the game room attendant kicked us out.”
“What happened then?”
“I guess we left?” Sullivan absent-mindedly stroked the dog’s ears. “No. Wait. We were both on our bikes. We spent that whole week on our bikes, and I thought I was hot shit, because I could pop a wheelie on mine. We got on our bikes, and I think Hudson called me something, maybe a shithead? I popped a wheelie, and started to ride away.”
“What did Hudson do then?”
“You know? I was gonna say he rode away too, but now that I think about it, I remember I circled back, because I’d thought of some other incredibly rude name to call him. But just then, this flashy red car pulled up alongside Hudson’s bike, and the window came down and the driver was talking to him.”
“What kind of car?”
“I was nine. I didn’t know a Ford from a French fry. I remember I thought it was a cool car. And I was kinda jealous, because your brother knew someone with a cool car. Then, the driver handed Hudson a paper bag and he drove off, and I pedaled away too, to go to the pool because I was all hot and sweaty.”
Whelan leaned forward, his elbows planted on his knees. “You said the driver was a guy?”
“Did I? Hmm. I guess, now that you mention it, we saw that car around the Saint a lot that week.”
Sullivan snapped his fingers again. “Yeah. In fact, those cool girls I told you about? Lisa and Jessie, and oh, what was the name of the redhead with the big boobs? I don’t know. But they were always watching for that red car.”
“Whose car was it?”
Michael wrinkled his nose. “Maybe, like, a lifeguard? But maybe not. Maybe it was just one of those rich guys who were always around at the Saint.”
Whelan tried to hide his frustration. “Okay. Maybe that’s not important. Let’s talk about what happened later, at the pool.”
“Ugh. Let’s not,” Michael said promptly. “You asked me what was so traumatic about that summer? That. What happened at the pool. I still have nightmares about it.”
“I’m sorry to bring it up, but this is really important to me,” Whelan said.
Sullivan looked at him with something like pity. “Why? Why is it so important, all these years later? It’s been, like, twenty years. Why go dredging up all that mess?”
“The day Hudson died, that’s the day my mom’s life started to unravel. She blamed herself, because she told her son to get out of her hair and go play. And her asshole husband, who, by the way, was on a golf course at the time, blamed her too. They split up a few months later, and even though Brad had tons of family money, he made sure Kasey got almost none of it. I’ll spare you the details, but she was never the same after that.”
“Is she still… with us?”
“No. She died last year. We hadn’t really been very close in a long time, but after her death, I went to Spartanburg, that’s where she’d been living, to sell her condo. While I was cleaning it out, I found some papers, in a box in her dresser, that made me think there was more to Hudson’s death than any of us knew about. I decided I owed it to Kasey to find out the truth.”
“Okay, I get it. So, that day, a new kid showed up at the pool. And don’t ask me his name because I have no idea. We were jumping off the diving board. Having a cannonball contest. We’d been there around half an hour, and then Hudson shows up.”
“He didn’t go off the board with y’all?”
“No. He sat on the side of the pool at the deep end, yelling stuff, splashing water at us. Heckling us, I guess you’d say. We just ignored him. Which I think pissed him off even more. At some point, Hudson stood up and he started yelling and waving his arms and screaming that we’d pooped in the pool.”
“Right,” Whelan said. “And the lifeguards. Do you remember what they did then?”
“Shannon and Traci,” Michael said promptly. “Such cute girls. Traci was on the lifeguard stand at the deep end where we were, and Shannon was down at the shallow end. Traci yelled something like, ‘Code brown, everyone out of the pool,’ and then she and Shannon were blowing their whistles to make everyone get out of the pool.”
“And did you and the other kid get out?”
“Shit, yeah. They were the law. Plus, poop in the pool? Gross!”
“What did you do after you got out?”
“I don’t know. I guess we were standing there, trying to explain that we didn’t drop a deuce in the pool. I mean, it was bedlam.”
“And where was Hudson? At what point did he get in the pool?”
Michael ran his hands through his hair. “Honest to God, I never did know. The cops kept asking me, but I never saw him get in the water. I think Traci, or maybe it was Shannon, saw him there, and screamed at him to get out of the water. He was, like, flailing his arms and he kept going underwater—you know, like he was pretending to drown.”
The younger man shook his head. “I just thought it was typical Hudson, trying to prank everyone. I mean, it turns out he’d deliberately put that Tootsie Roll in the water to get us in trouble. And I know those two lifeguards thought the same thing, that he was faking it, because they were yelling at him to cut it out.”
Michael stood abruptly. “Fuck it. I really, really need a drink now. You?”
“Just water,” Whelan said.
Gladys the golden followed her master toward what Whelan assumed was the kitchen. A moment later, Sullivan returned, with a highball glass filled with what Whelan assumed was gin or vodka, with a twist of lime, and a can of carbonated water for Whelan.
He sat back down and sipped his drink, and Gladys joined him on the sofa.
Sullivan placed his hand over his heart. “I swear to God. Nobody else was in that pool when Hudson drowned. For a long time, people thought I shoved him in, or pushed him under or something. Hell, I think my own mother thought that, may she rest in eternal torment, the bitch. But I swear, on Bette Midler’s life, I never touched your brother. I don’t know how or why he drowned. I just know it wasn’t anything I did.”
“Okay,” Whelan said. He popped the top of the can and took a long drink of the cold, bubbly water. “Okay. I believe you. And if it’s any comfort, that’s the same thing Shannon told me, earlier this week.”
“Shannon? The lifeguard? You talked to her? You mean she’s still around?”
“She is. In fact, she’s a nurse. She still lives in Bonaventure.”
“Wow. Just… wow. I can’t believe you managed to track her down after all these years. Come to think of it, how did you track me down? How did you even know about me?”
“I’m pretty good at what I do,” Whelan said. “I found a sympathy card from you in my mom’s things. More importantly, I had to threaten to sue the Bonaventure sheriff’s office, but they finally gave me access to the old incident reports from that day. And you were listed as a witness. Michael Sullivan, age ten.”
Sullivan gulped down more of his drink, then jiggled the ice cubes at the bottom of the highball glass. “Sometimes, I wonder what my life would have been like, if I hadn’t been there that day. If I’d let Hudson win at Ping-Pong, or if I’d told him, sure, come on, you can be in the cannonball contest. Maybe he wouldn’t have pulled that stunt. And maybe…” His voice trailed off, and he finished off the last of his drink. “Maybe I wouldn’t have spent thousands of dollars in therapy. Maybe I would have come out sooner…”
“And maybe, things would have been the same,” Whelan said. “I think something else happened that day. Something that could explain why Hudson died. What you just told me? About that red car? And the guy that handed him a bag? This is the first time I’ve heard anything like this. Did the cops ask you the same questions I just did?”
“No. They just asked about what happened in the pool. That’s all.”
“Figures.” Whelan stood up slowly. His knees, he’d begun to notice, had started to get creaky. He set the drink can down on the table.
“Better shove off,” he said. “And I guess you better let your friend Jill know the stranger didn’t kill you, or cannibalize you.”
Sullivan stood too. “Yeah. Guess I will. Hey, since you know where to find me, can you let me know? If you find out what happened to Hudson? I’d really appreciate it.”
“Sure thing,” Whelan said.