by Greg Iles
Her nephew, Kaiser thought angrily. Is this some kind of custody crap? Jamie Fennell was the reason Alex had worked this case so hard and so recklessly. But…what if it was something else? What if the kid meant something to Tarver, too? Was that possible? Could Bill Fennell somehow be helping Tarver to escape? Not if the pathologist was driving down to the Gulf, he couldn’t. But what if he wasn’t? What if someone else was driving that truck?
CHAPTER 53
Bill Fennell lived on the southwestern bank of the Ross Barnett Reservoir, fifty square miles of water that could kick up ocean-sized whitecaps in a storm like the one that was on its way. Despite their proximity to the Jackson Yacht Club, most houses here were older than the McMansions on the eastern shore. Bill had solved that problem by buying four contiguous lots just north of the yacht club, then tearing down the houses on them and building his vision of nouveau riche paradise.
Alex and Will were less than five minutes away from the result, roaring along Coachman’s Road in the blue Nissan Titan Will had substituted for his Explorer, which was recovering from the explosion at the primate lab. Will’s .357 magnum lay on the seat between them, and a 12-gauge shotgun was lying on the backseat. Alex’s borrowed Sig was in the glove box, and she had a Smith & Wesson .38 strapped to her left ankle.
“You get any more text messages?” Will asked.
“No. I just hope they haven’t left yet. They’ve got to come out this way, right?”
“Not necessarily. There’s half a dozen ways out of that old neighborhood.”
“Great.”
The turbulent waters of the reservoir came into sight. Will turned south, heading along the spit of land that held the yacht club and the Fennell home. “How do you want to play it?” he asked.
“We’re going to ask nicely for Ben,” said Alex. “Then we’re going to take him out of there. Bill should be arrested for murder before the day is out.”
“Bill can be a cranky son of a bitch,” Will said. “He almost went to jail for beating up a guy on the side of the road one time. Road rage.”
“I didn’t know that.” Alex let her left hand fall on the magnum. “But I’d say we’re prepared to deal with that.” She pointed to a tall, wrought-iron gate fifty meters ahead. “Slow down.”
Will pulled up to the gate and stopped.
“Chained shut,” Alex said, pointing at a heavy padlock.
Will got out, climbed into the bed of his truck, opened the shining toolbox, and removed a long pair of bolt cutters. He cut the chain easily, then tossed the cutters into the truck bed and climbed back behind the wheel.
“You’re handy to have around,” said Alex.
Will looked hard into her eyes. “Before we go in, let me ask you one thing. What’s the chance that we’re walking into some kind of trap?”
She had tried not to focus on this possibility, but rather to prepare herself for whatever might happen. But now Will had given voice to her fear.
“That’s why you’re here,” she said softly. “If I knew for sure it was just Bill, I wouldn’t need anybody to help me deal with him.”
Will sighed like an old man in need of a nap. “That’s what I figured.”
“I can go without you,” Alex said, meaning it. “You can wait right here.”
The detective cocked his head and looked over at her, his watery eyes like those of an old hound dog. “Honey, your daddy pulled me out of so many tight spots I couldn’t begin to count ’em. I’m here now because he can’t be. And I’m gonna do exactly what I know he’d do.” Will put the truck into gear and rolled forward. “Let’s go get that boy.”
He drove through the gate and around the long, sweeping drive that led to the rear of the Fennell mansion, an oversize copy of a Louisiana plantation house, with tall, white columns and a wraparound porch. He stopped when they were still a hundred meters away and parked behind a thick stand of trees.
“This is far enough,” he said.
As he switched off the engine, the rain that had been threatening for hours finally swept over the property like advancing waves of gray-clad soldiers. The first drops hit the truck like shots from a pellet gun, and then the aggregate blotted out the mansion. Through the gaps in the trees, Alex could just make out the leaden surface of the reservoir. She opened the glove box and took out the Sig-Sauer Will had given her two days ago, then got out and walked up to an oak tree. Will carried the shotgun loosely along his left leg, his pistol gripped in his right hand. When he drew up beside her, they turned together and surveyed the house and grounds while the rain soaked their clothes.
The mansion had been built facing the reservoir. Hundreds of trees and shrubs dotted the twelve-acre lot, with gardens and ponds placed throughout in the English style. The landscaping alone had cost more than the houses around it. To their left stood a tennis court, to their right an infinity pool with a serpentine slide for Ben.
In front of the house, Alex knew, a broad pier ran far out over the reservoir. A boathouse stood at the end of it, and it held twice the boat that Andrew Rusk owned. A Carrera bowrider, she remembered, with twin outboards that could push it to ninety knots, which was almost flying.
“Me and Jim did this many a time,” Will said. “Thousands of times, I bet, if you count domestic calls.”
Alex’s abraded elbows stung as though the rain were acid. “That’s Bill’s Hummer,” she said, pointing to a splash of yellow sticking out of the distant garage. “He’s got a pair of them. H1s.”
“I know,” said Will. “I used to see them when he’d drop off Jamie to go fishing with Jim.”
“I forgot you used to go with them sometimes.”
Will nodded, then started marching across the open ground. “Jamie’s a good boy. Never liked his daddy much, though. Loudmouthed prick, you ask me.”
“You know what I think,” said Alex, following closely.
As the house grew larger, a low growl crossed the space between them. It was Will’s voice, she realized, speaking in an entirely different register.
“If Bill tries to stop us taking Jamie out of there,” he said, “you go outside and wait for me.”
“Uncle Will, you—”
“Hush, girl.” The detective turned toward her as he walked, his eyes flat and hard. “None of that hostage-negotiator bullshit. You get out of there and let me do what needs to be done.”
Alex had never heard Will speak this way. He was talking to her across a generation. But she understood. Will Kilmer had worked homicide for two decades, and he knew that a murder trial was a notoriously unreliable business, especially if the defendant could afford top criminal lawyers. But if Bill Fennell perished in the confusion of a domestic disturbance, there would be no custody battle over Jamie. It was an inhuman train of thought, she knew—or was it essentially human? Either way, Will had a point. All that mattered now was Jamie.
They moved like shadows through the rain. Will walked faster, breathing hard but showing no sign of slowing. When the house was twenty meters away, they halted behind some tall evergreen shrubs.
“Up the porch steps?” Alex asked.
Will shook his head. “Circle the house and try to get a look inside.”
“Split up?”
“Normally, I’d say yes. Today? No. When we reach the right corner of the house, we’ll climb onto the porch so we can see through the windows.”
They moved out from behind the shrubs and started toward the right side of the house. Will pushed through the thick hedge below the porch, then climbed over the rail at the corner and waited for Alex. He moved with surprising grace, she noted, clambering over behind him.
Through the first window they saw only an empty room. They moved lightly along the wall to the next window. Again, she saw no people.
“Put your hands in the air,” said a commanding voice from behind them. “I’m pointing a sawed-off twelve-gauge shotgun at your backs.”
Utter blackness descended in Alex’s soul.
“Keep facin
g the wall, but toss your weapons back over the rail. All of them.”
“Where did he come from?” Will whispered from her left.
The hedge, she realized. He was waiting behind the hedge.
Will half-turned and in a tough voice said, “Listen to me, Bill Fennell. You’re already in a bucketful of shit. You don’t want to—”
“That’s not Bill,” Alex told him.
Will looked over his shoulder, then closed his eyes and shook his head.
Alex had to admire Dr. Tarver’s strategy. He had sent the “message from Jamie,” then waited behind the porch hedge to assess the response. Simple but brilliant, since it would have prevented him from being trapped in the house had an army of SWAT agents descended on it. But no such army was coming. The question was, why was Tarver here at all?
“Don’t try to play hero, partner,” said the doctor. “Chivalry is expensive, and you’re past the age for it.” Tarver took a step to his right. “I have a picture of you in my cell phone, Pop. You’re sleeping soundly after a few beers.”
Will muttered something unintelligible.
“And you, Agent Alex. You remember what it feels like to be hit with buckshot, don’t you?”
The right side of her face tingled. She could feel Will tensing beside her, like a cat preparing to spring. She closed her eyes and tried to reach him by force of will. Don’t try it…you can’t beat a bullet, not even buckshot—
“Get those guns over the rail!” Tarver snapped again. “Now!”
“Where’s Jamie?” Alex asked, tossing the Sig over her shoulder.
“You’ll see.”
Dear Lord, let him be alive…
“I love you, baby girl,” said the faintest whisper beside her.
Baby girl? That was what Will had called his daughter, before she died in the—
In the same motion that Will tossed his shotgun over his shoulder, he whirled away from Alex with all the speed that a seventy-year-old man could muster. He fired his pistol as he spun, trying to disorient Tarver as much as possible while he bought Alex one chance. Her hand was almost to the .38 in her ankle holster when the artillery-like boom of the shotgun blotted out the reports of Will’s pistol. The sound hurled her back to the Federal Reserve bank, when a desperate man had shattered her closest friend and half her face in a matter of seconds. When she came up with her .38, the smoking mouth of Dr. Tarver’s shotgun was only two feet from her eyes.
“It would be a shame to ruin the other half,” he said.
Moving only her eyes, Alex glanced down to her right.
Will lay on his stomach, a dark pool spreading beneath him. Several ragged exit wounds revealed splintered white bone from his scapula. One hole was almost directly over his spine.
“Aaahhhhh,” Alex moaned, her eyes stinging. “You son of a bitch!”
“He chose his fate,” Dr. Tarver said. “A brave man.”
He died like my daddy did, said the voice of the little girl inside her.
“What?” asked Tarver, snatching the .38 from her hand.
Had she spoken aloud?
“Into the house,” Tarver ordered. “Go.”
Alex started to step over Will, but Tarver shook his head and pointed to the front of the house—the reservoir side. As she walked, she stared along the pier, wondering if the Carrera was in the boathouse. Bill often left the key out there. If she could get Jamie out of the house…then get him to the boathouse—
The front section of the wraparound porch was screened. She opened the door to the protected area, walked in, then stopped before the stained cypress door that led to the main house. What nightmare lay on the other side of it?
“Go in,” Dr. Tarver said.
She turned the knob and pushed open the door.
Bill Fennell lay sprawled at the foot of the main staircase. His long legs were bent at odd angles, and his mouth appeared to be frozen open. As Alex swept her eyes across the room, frantically searching for Jamie, the shotgun barrel prodded her between the shoulder blades, driving her forward.
“Why did you kill him?”
“He’s not dead,” said Dr. Tarver. “I sedated him.”
True or false? “Where’s Jamie?”
Tarver pointed the shotgun across the room to a hall that led to the rear of the house. “That way.”
A paralyzing numbness made itself known in her lower trunk. It was spreading upward fast. She looked back at the doctor. “Are you taking me to Jamie?”
A chiding smile in the gray beard. “You’re not here for a reunion.”
Her palms tingled.
“Open the laundry room.”
She braced herself for unendurable horror, then opened the slatted door.
Jamie was perched atop the washing machine, staring down at two black coils on the floor. It took Alex a moment to absorb the reality. The snakes were thick and short, with big triangular heads and pointed snouts. Water moccasins—
“Aunt Alex!” Jamie cried, his eyes flashing. “You came!”
She forced herself to grin as though everything were fine now. “I sure did, buddy.” She turned back to Dr. Tarver and hissed, “You sadist.”
Tarver chuckled. “The boy’s fine. See those cases?”
He’d gestured at two large waterproof cases on the safe side of the snakes. Pelicans, Alex thought. The kind of cases engineers used to haul expensive gear around the world. The larger case was bright yellow, the other white.
“I want you to carry them to the front of the house,” Tarver said. “Move it.”
“I’ll be back, Jamie,” she promised.
Jamie nodded with complete faith, but his eyes quickly returned to the snakes on the floor. The cases were almost too heavy for Alex to lift. As she backed out with them, she saw Dr. Tarver pick up a white croker sack with a drawstring and open it wide. Maybe he was going to bag the damned snakes for a while.
Realizing that Tarver had not followed her to the front room, she dropped the cases and rushed to Bill’s gun cabinet. Behind those doors lay a wealth of firearms, but they were locked tight. She was trying to break them open when Tarver walked back into the room, dragging Jamie by one arm. Jamie screamed blue murder as he came, in the furious high-pitched voice of a ten-year-old boy. “My aunt Alex is going to blow your goddamn head off, you big ape!”
Tarver smacked the boy on the side of his head, dropping him to the floor. Jamie’s screaming ceased.
Where’s the shotgun? Alex wondered.
Tarver walked over to a bookshelf, reached up to a high one, and brought down an automatic pistol that Alex recognized as a Beretta from Bill’s collection. Then he drew Alex’s borrowed Sig-Sauer from the small of his back.
“Why are you doing this?” she asked. “Why didn’t you just take off when you had the chance?”
Tarver gave her a tight smile. “I’m entering a new life today. Vanishing into another identity. And I would gladly have let you live to old age. But I’m afraid you have a clue to the road I’m taking to my new life. You may not know you have it, but you do. And if I let you live, you’ll eventually remember.”
With the most casual of motions, Dr. Tarver half turned and shot Bill Fennell in the head with Alex’s Sig.
She jumped back in shock, but she had no time to worry about Bill. Jamie was stirring on the floor. If he raised his head, he would see his father’s ruined face. She lunged across the space between them and covered Jamie with her body.
“Perfect,” said Tarver. “How’s this sound? You couldn’t live another minute with the idea that your nephew was under the power of your brother-in-law. You came to rescue him. Fennell resisted, so you shot him. Sadly, the boy was killed in the crossfire. I think the Bureau will want the investigation closed as quickly as possible.”
“Please,” Alex said to the emotionless face. “Kill me, just let him live.”
Tarver shook his head. “He can’t survive to tell your friends at the Bureau that he had two strangers as overnight guests last
night.”
She blinked in bewilderment. “Two?”
“My brother Judah.”
Alex pondered this. “Is that who’s driving the truck? With the boat?”
Tarver smiled. “A little makeup can do wonders. Good-bye, Alexandra. You led a merry chase.”
He switched the Beretta to his right hand, then stepped back, moving the gun left and right as though selecting a target appropriate to the intended fiction. An almost irresistible rush of instinct told Alex to lift Jamie as best she could and run. She knew she would accomplish nothing, but wasn’t it better to die trying? The Beretta stabilized as Tarver settled on his final target. At least Jamie was unconscious for the end. Forcing her arms under him, she struggled to lift his sagging weight. No shot came. Why hasn’t he fired? she wondered.
Dr. Tarver had cocked his head as though straining to hear something above the sound of the storm outside. Alex found herself listening, too, first in vain, but then…the relentless slapping of rotor blades separated from the rain, and she knew that John Kaiser’s glorious Bell 430 was dropping down over the house like the Air Cav descending on a besieged hamlet in Vietnam.
“Your plan won’t work now, Doctor,” she said, summoning the calm equanimity of a hostage negotiator who has nothing personal at stake in a confrontation. “You’ll never sell that story now, no matter what you do. Your being here screws it all up.”
Tarver stepped forward and laid the pistol barrel against her forehead. Clearly, he was not convinced. If he shot her now, Alex realized, then somehow slipped away in the storm, his tale of domestic tragedy might still play at FBI headquarters. But time was his enemy, time and the men gathering outside.
The Beretta slammed into her face with blinding force. She collapsed onto Jamie. Pounding footsteps receded, then returned. Dr. Tarver jerked her to her feet. As her vision returned, she saw he was carrying a coil of rope and a roll of duct tape. His backpack lay at his feet.
“That’s FBI SWAT out there,” Alex said. “You don’t have a prayer of getting away.”
Tarver cut a length of rope, bound Jamie’s legs together, then tied him to the heavy leg of the nearby sofa. “Tell me who’s in charge.”