“Now this one,” LePere said, and he handed them a second paper.
It was dated the next day, November 20, 1986. The headline read SOLE SURVIVOR OF SHIPWRECK FOUND. The article reported that the Coast Guard had located a single pontoon raft from the lost ore carrier Alfred M. Teasdale. Three men had made it onto the raft before the ship went down, but only one man had survived the long ordeal of the wait to be rescued. John Sailor LePere had been found, barely alive, as the raft floated in open water nearly twenty miles from the area believed to be the site of the sinking. LePere had been flown by Coast Guard helicopter to Ashland, Wisconsin, where his condition was reported as serious.
“Here.” LePere handed the women another paper.
It was dated November 22, 1986. SOLE SURVIVOR TELLS TERRIFYING TALE was the headline.
Grace Fitzgerald let the paper lie unread in her lap. She looked up at LePere. “What does any of this have to do with us?”
“With you,” LePere replied brusquely. “The Teasdale was owned and operated by the Fitzgerald Shipping Company. She was an old carrier, too old. She should have been scrapped long before that last passage.”
“The article says the storm was one of the worst ever on Superior.”
“No other ships were lost.” LePere slapped the remaining newspapers down on the coffee table and leaned toward Grace. “The Teasdale had help in its sinking.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Explosives,” LePere said. He grabbed a newspaper and tore away part of a page. He took out his pocket knife and unfolded the blade. “Small charges set in a line across the hull.” He poked a line of holes with the tip of his knife across the piece of newsprint. “Then you wait for a storm, the kind of storm that happens all the time on the Great Lakes in November. And when it comes, you detonate the charges all at the same time.” With the blade, he cut dashes where he’d poked holes. “The waves twist the hull up and down, and eventually, the ship breaks up.” He tore the paper in half along the line he’d made. “And it looks like a terrible accident.”
“That sounds awfully far-fetched,” Grace said.
“Believe me, it’s been done before.”
“But why?”
“Insurance.”
Grace Fitzgerald’s face grew hard. “You’re saying my father or his agents would have conspired to cause a tragedy like this for the insurance money? Obviously, you didn’t know my father, Mr. LePere.”
“I have proof. Hard proof.”
“I don’t believe it.”
“I located the wreck. I’ve been diving it, filming the damage to the hull. The proof is there. But someone’s been watching me. A few days ago they tried to kill me. They destroyed all my equipment.”
“And you think it was someone from Fitzgerald Shipping.”
“No one else would have cared.”
“I can’t believe this.”
“Believe it.” LePere stormed from the room and came back with a framed photograph. He nearly threw it at Grace Fitzgerald. She glanced at it, then at LePere. “My brother Billy,” he said. “The last picture I ever took of him. He went down on the Teasdale. He was only eighteen years old.”
Grace took a longer, more careful look at the photo. The boy-for he was a boy, long and angular in his face and limbs, with a body that was held awkwardly, as if he hadn’t yet grown into it completely-was smiling. He stood on a small dock, with a cove at his back, and a high, dark wall of rock rising beyond that. “I’m sorry,” she said.
“Sorry doesn’t bring back the dead.”
She glared up at him. “But money does? I assume that note you left for my husband was a ransom note.”
He snatched the photo from her hand. “I needed the money to continue investigating the wreck, to prove Billy was murdered. That all those men were murdered.”
Grace studied him for a minute, her brown eyes hard, her long nose lifted. “How much are you asking?”
“Two million.”
“My husband will have trouble getting it.”
“Hell, you’re a lot richer than that.”
“I am. But he’s not. And he can’t touch my money. We signed agreements before we married.”
“He’s no pauper.”
“All of his assets are tied up in the mill. On his own, he can’t come up with more than a few hundred thousand.”
“You’re lying.”
“My life is at stake here, Mr. LePere. And my son’s. Why would I lie?”
“Nobody’s going to die.”
“But we know who you are.”
“Yeah.” The anger seemed to wash from him. His shoulders sagged and he closed his eyes a moment. “That’s what I wanted to talk to you about.” He stepped to a chair, a bentwood rocker, and sat down. He stared at his brother’s photograph, held delicately in his hands.
“When I was on that raft, something strange happened to me, something I’ve never told anybody about.”
He told them the story of his ordeal on the raft. The huge waves, the freezing water, the fierce bitter wind. The men dying one by one until he alone was left. Then he told them what he’d never told anyone else. “My father came to me. My dead father. He sat on the edge of the raft and told me it wasn’t my time to die. He said he and my mother and Billy were all waiting for me, but it wasn’t my time.” LePere was up now, pacing, the muscles of his face taut with emotion. “I tried to drink that memory away, along with all the other memories about the sinking, but it wouldn’t go. I couldn’t figure out why it wasn’t my time, why out of all the good men on that ore boat, I was the only one spared. I spent nearly a dozen years lost in figuring that one out. But I finally did.” He stopped pacing and faced Grace. “I’m supposed to find the truth.”
Jo held up her taped hands. “Was this a part of it?”
He seemed genuinely sorry. “No, things just went… wrong. Look, I want to make a deal.”
“We’re listening,” Jo said.
“Your lives in return for a promise that the wreck of the Teasdale will be fully investigated and that nothing that’s found will be covered up.”
Grace Fitzgerald said, “I promise.”
He ignored her, but he looked steadily at Jo. “I know you. I’ve heard your word is good.”
“I give you my word, John. But you understand, you will be prosecuted. There’s nothing I can do about that.”
He sat again in the rocker. “How does that saying go? Know the truth and the truth will set you free. For a long, long time, I’ve felt like a man in prison. You find the truth and it won’t matter what they do to me. I’ll still be free.”
Grace asked cautiously, “Will you let us go now?”
“I can’t. But soon.”
“Why?” Jo asked. “The other man?”
“He’s not a good man,” Grace said.
LePere nodded his agreement. “But I owe him.”
“And how do you intend to repay him?” Jo asked.
“We go through with the ransom. He takes the money-all of it-and disappears. After he’s gone, I set you free, and I take the rap.”
“I told you, my husband may not be able to raise the ransom.”
“Then we’ll take whatever he can give and that will have to do. For me, it was never about money.”
“What about your partner?”
“I’ll take care of him.”
“Never trust a man who’d hurt a child or a woman.”
“He hurt you?”
“Not me. Grace.”
He gave Grace Fitzgerald a questioning look and she nodded.