“That’s cool, that’s cool,” he said. “I’ll take him in and let Todd bore him sober.”
Maggie looked over at Nichols, who was sneering at Lon. Great. Apparently, he didn’t like black cops, either. That should be entertaining for Lon.
Lon quickly read Nichols his rights, and Maggie nodded goodbye to Boudreaux and pulled away.
Lon walked Nichols over to the cruiser, opened the back-passenger door, and tried to guide him in. Nichols weaved a bit.
“Come on, get it together,” Lon said. “My fish getting cold, man.”
He got Nichols in, slammed the door, and got back in the driver’s seat. Boudreaux walked up to the back window and tapped, as Lon started up the car.
Lon looked over his shoulder and buzzed the window down. Boudreaux calmly peered down at Nichols.
“Don’t bring your shrimp to my docks anymore,” he said quietly.
“What?! I barely had two beers,” the man protested.
Boudreaux bent at the waist so Nichols could hear him better. “Any man who raises his hand to a woman should have his head displayed on a pike for all of the other villagers to see,” he said calmly. “Take your shrimp somewhere else.”
He turned and headed back the way he’d come, as Lon rolled the window back up.
“What the hell, man,” Nichols grumbled.
“Man, you even know who you’re talkin’ to?” Lon asked, shaking his head.
“Yeah, Boudreaux. Some kinda big-time badass. Looks like another middle-aged rich guy to me.”
Lon laughed. “That was his daughter, man.” He put the car in gear. “I was you, I’d praise God, take my little shrimps, and go.”
Wyatt turned on the faucet, and looked in the men’s room mirror as he washed his hands. His brown, wavy hair could use a trim, and so could his moustache, now that he noticed. He nodded at Quincy as the deputy came in to use the facilities.
Wyatt finished washing his hands, took off his SO ball cap, and ran a little water through his hair to try to smooth it down or something. He was giving his moustache the same treatment when Quincy came to the sink next to him to wash up. Quincy looked at him in the mirror and smiled.
“You got a couple nose hairs, too.” He smiled as Wyatt gave him a look. “You want me to pluck ‘em out for ya? I do it for my wife all the time.”
“Shut up, Quincy,” Wyatt said. He turned off the water and turned on the hot hair dryer, stuck his hands underneath it.
“Bledsoe’s looking for you,” Quincy said. “Lotta press out there.”
“I saw them.”
“You want some irony?”
“Oh, sure,” Wyatt said. “I never have enough of that.”
Quincy joined him at the dryer. “Well, when you were Sheriff, we didn’t even have a Public Information Officer anymore, ’cause the press all wanted you, anyway,” he said. “Now, you’re the Public Information Officer, and you’re still stuck with the press.”
“Oh, I don’t know,” Wyatt said. “Bledsoe really enjoys a good photo opp.”
“Whatever. Guy’s a piece of work.”
Wyatt shrugged. “He did a good thing for Dwight and Amy.”
Quincy nodded. “Yeah, all right, I’ll give you that, but I have yet to see him put on a vest, you know what I’m saying? You never sent us anyplace that you weren’t going into first. He sends us all out of here like we’re delivering pizzas, and he hides behind his desk.”
Wyatt nodded. This was something he heard a lot, not that he hadn’t already made note of it.
“I gotta get out front, Quincy,” he said. “Let’s see if the mother can get this kid to come in.”
He pushed through the bathroom door, walked down the hall, and found Ginny Warner where he’d left her, sitting stiff-backed in the lobby, staring out the window at the cluster of reporters and cameramen who were stationed at the foot of the wide steps.
“Mrs. Warner? Are you ready to go on out?” he asked gently.
She nodded. “Yes.”
He opened the door for her, then followed her out as the reporters all came to attention and jockeyed for better position. He put a hand on Ginny’s shoulder and moved her to stand just behind and beside him. Then he gave the press a minute to situate themselves before speaking.
“I’m not going to be taking any questions today, so please be aware of that up front,” he said. “We’re here to give the public an update on our search for Ryan Warner and Adrian Nichols, and to allow Ryan’s mother to try to speak to her son and help him to understand that the best thing for everyone is for him to contact us and arrange to turn himself in.” He looked around the group. “If you’re going to edit something out, please edit me, okay?”
He cleared his throat and went on.
“We are currently following up on leads that we’re hoping will help us to locate these two boys, and to bring them home safely. Both of them,” he added, looking directly at one of the cameras. “I want to remind the people watching that, while we do believe that the shooting of Deputy Dwight Shultz was unintentional, we also believe that Ryan Warner is still armed. If you see him, please don’t interact with him. Just call 911, the Sheriff’s Office, or the Apalach PD. Those numbers should be on your screens.”
He cleared his throat and wished for the Mountain Dew that was sweating on his desk. It was a thousand degrees with 200% humidity.
“At this time, I’ll let Ryan’s mother, Ginny Warner, say a few words.”
He turned, put a hand on the small of her back, and guided her forward. She looked scared to death, and he felt badly about that.
She swallowed a couple of times, then looked into the cameras that were pointed at her.
“I know that a terrible thing has happened, and that my son has taken actions that have—I’m very, very sorry for the pain and fear that this deputy’s family are going through right now. But I hope that you will believe me when I say that Ryan has never wanted to hurt anyone in his life. He acted on impulse, when he was not in his normal frame of mind, and I know in my heart that that he regrets it so deeply. I also know that he’s frightened and confused and doesn’t know what to do to end all of this now.”
A tear ran down her right cheek. “Last year, when we first moved here, it was the middle of turtle season. Ryan loves animals. He wants to be a vet, and he couldn’t wait to go through the volunteer training. One day, when he was helping an adult volunteer check on the nests in their section, a big group of kids came by. It was a family reunion, and there several kids from about four on up to twelve, and they were watching from outside the barrier, and asking questions. I watched Ryan spend over an hour answering their questions, and teaching them why it was so important to not leave holes on the beach, or to litter.”
She looked down for a moment, wiped her mouth, then looked back up. “He talked about that for days, how much fun it was to share the turtles with the kids, and he even thought maybe he’d be a biology teacher if he didn’t get to go to vet school.”
She cleared her throat, and Wyatt cleared his reflexively.
“That’s what kind of person Ryan really is,” she went on quietly. “What happened Friday, that’s not Ryan. Ryan, I know you didn’t mean for this to happen. I know you’re scared. But please, please. Please call me, or the Sheriff’s Office. Please let Adrian Nichols go home. And you come home, too. We will get through this together, I promise. But you have to do the right thing now.”
She turned and looked over her shoulder at Wyatt. He stepped forward as several reporters started shooting questions out.
“No questions,” he said quietly. “Let us just get back to work resolving this situation.”
The bridge out to SGI, or St. George Island, was one of Maggie’s favorite locations in Franklin County. She didn’t get out to the island nearly as often as she would have liked, especially now that the kids were
bigger and weren’t begging for rides to the beach. Given a preference, she wouldn’t drive over there much at all during the months of June and July, because the tourist traffic, as mild as she knew it was, was just a little too much for her.
Even though it was June now, she felt a sense of relief and space the moment she pulled onto the four mile bridge. The water was calm this afternoon, and the sun glinted off it like someone had dumped a shipping container of diamonds into the bay. She watched the gray and brown pelicans hang-gliding over the water to her left, and on her right a large group of seagulls followed a shrimp boat that was heading out for the night.
When the old bridge to the island had become badly damaged, the Eastpoint and island ends had been repurposed into long fishing piers that were always popular with the locals, but were now also covered with summertime visitors.
Maggie rolled down her windows, breathed in the salt air, and was surprised by the squawk of a pelican as it coasted alongside the driver’s side a moment, just off the bridge, then divebombed whatever prey it had spotted down on the water, just below the surface.
A few minutes later, the bridge became the road, and Maggie stopped at the stop sign on Gulf Beach Drive. There was no one else at the intersection at the moment, and she tapped her nails against the steering wheel as she decided which way to go first. She had no definite destination, just a weary hope that she could roam around and accidentally find Ryan Warner. His mother said he loved the island, and she’d run out of more likely places to look.
The one thing the island did have, if someone was trying to stay unseen, was a lot of empty houses that people weren’t in at the moment, and a lot of out of town vehicles belonging to the people who were there. The former might be an attractive place to hide, though the chances of discovery were good. The latter provided decent camouflage for a car that every cop in the county was seeking.
Maggie decided she’d go left, east toward the State Park end of the island. The boys weren’t in the park, not in a car, anyway. Patrol cars went through it three times a day, and the rangers were keeping a lookout as well. But the houses between Maggie and the park were vacation rentals, many of them rented weekly, and it would be easier to avoid sticking out in one of them.
On the west end, there was the traffic and confusion of the public beaches in which to hide, but the houses were mainly second homes and longer-term, high end rentals. They terminated in a gated community that wouldn’t exactly be ideal.
It was slow going along Gulf Breeze, what with people in golf carts, people on bikes, and small groups of people with pool noodles and floats and buckets and coolers and overheated toddlers growing out of their bodies. That was okay with Maggie; it forced her to go slowly and look at each house she passed. With some of the empty ones, she drove through driveways and around the back. With others, it was clear that families were staying there.
It took her twenty minutes to get to the entrance of the state park, where she turned around, pulled into one of the parking spaces at a small pull-off. These spots were for people looking to do a little shore fishing, or those who preferred the company of egrets to the company of a thousand people from the Midwest. Maggie got out to stretch her legs. A break in the sea oats provided a sandy path to the beach. Maggie walked past the sign warning about rip-currents and the lack of lifeguards, and walked onto the beach.
After the broodiness of the weather the last couple of days, it was surprising to see the surf so calm. People bent at the waist like obedient servants, searching for shells, and down the beach a man stood next to a cooler, his line cast just off the shore break. Behind him, a stately heron kept him company, hoping to assist him with his catch.
Maggie took in a deep breath, then blew it out. It was time to head to the other end of the island, just so she could tell herself she checked. She knew she was reaching. She didn’t have a lot of hope that Ryan and Adrian were on the island.
Her phone buzzed in her pocket, and she pulled it out.
“Maggie Hamilton.”
“Hey, Maggie, it’s Myles.”
He sounded a little excited, so she went ahead and started walking back toward the car.
“Hey. What’s up?” she asked.
“Ryan Warner just did a Facebook Live,” he answered.
“Wait. He’s live on Facebook right now?” Maggie started walking faster.
“No, he was live about thirty minutes ago,” he answered. “We didn’t hear about it until it was already over. We’re getting ready to look at it now.”
“You can still watch it?”
“Yeah, the video stays up, it’s just not live anymore.”
“Okay, I get it.” She hit the asphalt and hurried to her car. “I’ll be there in fifteen minutes.”
She was there in eleven. When she hurried down the hall, she found Wyatt, Quincy and Bledsoe hovering behind Myles, who was seated at the conference table with his personal laptop. Wyatt looked over his shoulder as she came in.
“Hey, we’re getting ready to watch it again. Come here.”
“What’s he doing?” Maggie asked.
“Just talking, really,” Wyatt answered.
“Is Adrian in it, too?”
“We don’t see Adrian anywhere on camera, but you do hear him at the end, so he’s alive. Restrained, maybe.”
Maggie went to stand beside him. Myles looked over his shoulder at her.
“Okay,” he said. He already had Ryan Warner’s Facebook page up. The live post was at the top. The still picture showed another close-up shot of Ryan. He was wearing a blue tee shirt.
“He took off the hoodie,” Maggie said. “Or he got fresh clothes somewhere.”
“I checked the YouTube video,” Quincy said. “You can see the collar of this shirt sticking up from the hoodie in that one. I think he just took it off.”
“Okay.” Maggie wondered if he was someplace air-conditioned. A heavy hoodie in this heat was unthinkable.
“You guys ready?” Myles asked, sounding a little irritated. They were all on edge after four days; no one took it personally.
He clicked on the post, and Ryan immediately started speaking.
“Um, this is Ryan Warner,” he said, sounding old and weary. “I’m making this live post because I want to tell the family of the deputy I shot—Deputy Shultz—I want to tell them that I’m really sorry.”
He swiped at his forehead with the back of his hand, and Maggie decided he was probably without AC.
“I know I took a gun on the bus—to school—and I know that was crazy and wrong. I can’t really explain what I was thinking. I didn’t even know what I wanted to do with it, except that I wanted to scare Adrian and Stuart and them.”
He sighed and leaned just a little to reach off-camera. When he did, there was something about his face from that angle, something about his partial profile, that made him look much younger than seventeen. Certainly, Ginny Warner had seen this by now. She’d probably watched it a dozen times already, just to see him, and hear his voice.
Maggie wondered if his profile struck her the same way; if she saw her seven-year-old son or her ten-year-old son when she looked at him from the side. Her twelve-year-old son, who hadn’t yet picked up a loaded gun and shoved it underneath his hoodie.
He straightened back up and brought a half-empty bottle of water to his lips, took a drink. Maggie wondered where he got it.
“I wonder if we should look at security camera footage from the gas stations and mini-marts,” she thought out loud.
Myles clicked the video to stop it. “That wouldn’t be such a bad idea if there weren’t so many of them.”
“Plus, you’re talking about let’s say fifteen places, times four days,” Quincy said.
“Yeah, we don’t have the manpower for it,” Bledsoe said. “And it would only tell us where he had been, not where he is.”
“But it would probably put us in the right neighborhood,” Wyatt said, thinking
“Yeah, probably.”
“But you’re right, we don’t have the manpower, or the time if we did,” Wyatt conceded. “Every twenty-four hours gives us another twenty-four hours of video to watch.”
“Well, maybe what we should do is go to each gas station or convenience store or whatever and show them pictures of these boys,” Maggie said. “Just because they sell the paper doesn’t mean they read it. Somebody might remember him.”
“Look, if we can’t find this kid in the next twelve hours or so, then, yeah,” Bledsoe said. “We’ll use some of our hours doing that. But for all we know he got that water out of Adrian’s car or something. I don’t think we divert too many of our resources that way yet. I’ll see if I can squeeze a couple of guys in for it.”
“Okay, sorry, just thinking out loud,” Maggie said. “Go ahead Myles.”
Myles turned the video back on, and Maggie heard Ryan swallow a big gulp of water. As he put it down, the screen started scrolling and flashing beneath him. Maggie couldn’t see it that well standing up.
“What is all that?”
“Comments,” Myles said. “People can comment live, too.”
“Okay.”
“I’m wondering why he did the Facebook thing instead of another YouTube video,” Wyatt said.
“I have a theory,” Myles said. “Because I was wondering that when Quincy said there was a video on his page.” He looked at Maggie. “We’ve had his Facebook up on here since Friday, over in the bullpen, but other than posts from some of his friends in Orlando, there hasn’t been anything going on.”
“So what’s your theory?” Blesdoe asked a little impatiently.
“Faster upload. YouTube videos are a pain to upload, especially if you’re on your phone. He’s gotta be in a hurry, right, because he keeps his phone turned off so he can’t get tracked.”
“Can you make it full screen?” Bledsoe asked. “Let’s see if we can pick anything out of the background there.”
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