23. Jessika
TWENTY-THREE
JESSIKA
He's more fragile than I've ever seen him.
Morgan has always been the volatile one, the one who lived loudly, who felt things at volume, who crashed and recovered and crashed again with the particular exhausting frequency of someone whose internal weather is always extreme.
Even at his worst, there was a quality of aliveness to him, a presence.
He's present now, but carefully. Like he's learned to take up less space.
We sit inside the camp with the wood stove going and camp mugs of instant coffee and Morgan tells us, slowly, carefully, starting and stopping and occasionally losing the thread, what happened.
He found the contamination in February. The survey job was routine county work, environmental baseline measurements on county-owned parcels, and the anomaly on 74-B was initially just, interesting.
Something to investigate further. He pulled samples, sent them to a private lab in Atlanta because he didn't trust the county systems, and when the results came back in March, he understood what he had.
"I knew it was Holcomb's property," he says. "The boundary is clear in the records. But I didn't understand, at first I thought it was just negligence. Someone not paying attention to their drainage. But the pattern was too consistent for negligence."
"Deliberate disposal," Grant says.
"Systematic. Three years at minimum. Someone's been paying Holcomb to use that parcel as a dump site for industrial solvents." He wraps his hands around the mug. "I started looking into who. Who would need to dispose of solvents in volume. Who had the right kind of operation."
"Did you find them?" I ask.
"I found a name," he says. "A company. Meridian Industrial Waste, based in Charlotte. They have contracts in three states. And they have—" he pauses, "—relationships with county officials in several places who make their operations convenient."
"Holcomb," Grant says.
"Holcomb and—" Morgan stops. Looks at his coffee.
"I was getting there. I had almost everything I needed.
And then I—" He closes his eyes briefly.
"I started using again. I want you to know, I don't entirely know how it started again.
I was stressed, I was scared, I was—someone offered and I said yes when I been saying no for four years and then it moved fast. The way it always moves. "
"Morgan," I say gently.
"I know who gave it to me," he says. "The first time. I know who made the introduction." He looks at me directly. "It wasn't Grant."
I hold his gaze. "I know."
He blinks. Something in his face shifts, relief, and something like grief underneath it.
"You know," he says.
“Grant told me."
"You were sick," I say. "You were sick and scared and making decisions in the middle of the storm of it."
"I let you testify against him," he says. His voice is very quiet.
I hear Grant shift behind me. I don't turn.
"Yes," I say. "And we're going to talk about that. But not today. Today I need you to tell me who made the introduction."
Morgan breathes.
"Deputy Collins," he says.
The room is very quiet.
"Collins," Grant says. Very controlled.
"He knew I was getting close to the Holcomb connection," Morgan says. "He introduced me to someone, said it was casual, a mutual friend, and within two weeks I was using again." He looks at the table. "He's not—he's not a dealer. But he knew exactly what he was doing."
"And when you got bad enough that your findings looked compromised," I say, "you were no longer a credible threat."
"Yes." He looks up. "And then I got scared. When I started coming back to myself a little, I realized what had happened and I understood that I was—I was a loose end. I ran."
"You've been here eight months," Grant says.
"I have medication now. There's a clinic in town, I’ve been—" he stops. "I've been trying to get stable. I didn't want to contact anyone until I knew I could hold a conversation." He looks at me. "I've been talking to Nova."
"I know."
"She's something," he says. And for a moment, just a moment, the Morgan I grew up with is entirely present in his face. The warmth of him. The particular quality of his love.
"She is," I agree.
He looks at Grant.
"I never thanked you," Morgan says. "Properly. For all of it."
Grant's jaw works.
"You don't have to—" he starts.
"You went to prison," Morgan says steadily. "For protecting me. I let that happen. I've been living with that for a long time."
Grant is quiet for a moment.
"We've all been living with things for a long time," he says finally. "Now we do something about it."
Morgan nods.
"Okay," he says. "What do we do?"
We drive back south in the late afternoon, leaving Morgan at the camp with instructions to stay put until we've made contact with someone trustworthy in law enforcement, not Collins, not county, someone at the state level who has no relationship with Holcomb.
I have a law school contact at the state AG's office. It's a long shot, but the AG's office is where you go when the county is compromised.
Grant drives and I work my phone, making careful notes, building the structure of what a formal complaint looks like, what evidence we have and what we still need.
After a while, Grant says: "You should know, Collins has been, not entirely bad to me. Over the years."
I look at him.
"He's told me things I needed to know. He kept some situations from getting worse." He keeps his eyes on the road. "I don't think he's all the way crooked. I think he made a decision to protect himself by being useful to the wrong people, and now he's in too deep to see a way out."
"Does that change what we do?" I ask.
"No," he says. "It's just context."
I think about context. About all the ways this county's story is complicated by relationship and history and the particular way that small places make everyone adjacent to everything else.
"When this comes out," I say carefully, "what happens to you?"
He glances at me. "What do you mean?"
“The things you've been involved in, you found Morgan.
You've been investigating privately. You had the documents from Ellory.
You put your hands on someone at a bonfire party two weeks ago.
" I pause. "You have a record and a reputation and Holcomb is going to point in every direction he can before this is done. "
"He can point all he wants," Grant says. "The evidence is what it is."
"I'm asking what happens to you personally."
He's quiet.
"I'll be fine," he says. Flat. Like it's a settled matter.
"Grant."
"I've been taking shots in this county for years," he says. "A few more won't kill me."
"Stop," I say. "Stop doing that."
He glances at me.
"Stop making yourself the acceptable casualty," I say. "That is not how this goes. You came forward with evidence. You've been acting to protect people. That matters. That has to matter."
He's quiet for a long time.
"Okay," he says finally. Not entirely convinced. But trying.
The highway runs south through the falling October light.
"I need you to stay," I say. Quiet. Not asking him to decide anything. Not applying pressure. Just saying it.
He drives.
"You haven't asked me what I want," he says.
"I just told you what I want," I say. "What do you want?"
Another long quiet.
"This," he says. The word is very simple. Like he's stripped away everything around it. “This, what this has been. The kitchen table. The horses. Your father and Nova and—" He stops. "You."
I hold the word.
"Then stay," I say.
He reaches across the console and takes my hand.
He holds it for the rest of the drive home.