Landry knew how quickly things could go south. Anything that can go wrong, will go wrong. So it wasn’t surprising when Franklin’s extended family showed up. One of them was the sheriff’s detective. The cousin, Jolie. Franklin seemed unable to deter them. Which was what you’d expect from someone like Franklin.
Bad enough. But that was only the first shoe to drop.
First thing, get the extended family out of the way. Landry called Frank and told him to send them to the octagon house. He also told him to keep them occupied.
Then he turned his attention to the other shoe: the sheriff’s vehicle currently turning off Cape San Blas Road and approaching the gatehouse. Franklin, who had been driving his golf cart in the direction of the octagon house, answered Landry’s call on the first ring.
“Why’s the sheriff here?” Landry said. “Did you call him?”
“The sheriff?”
“Behind you.”
The golf cart slewed to a stop. Franklin leaned out, craning his neck around to get a view of the gatehouse.
Landry asked him, “You didn’t call the sheriff?”
“No. Why would I do that?”
Landry knew the ring of truth when he heard it. “What’s he doing here?”
“I don’t know.”
Landry wondered if the sheriff had come to notify the attorney general about his wife’s death. Probably. “Get rid of him, Franklin.”
“What do I say? Anything about what you guys are doing?”
“No, don’t mention us. The sheriff’s office doesn’t know about the FBI’s involvement, and we’re going to keep it that way. How many people in the patrol vehicle?”
“One.”
“Do you recognize him?”
“It’s the sheriff himself, Tim Johnson.”
That sounded like a death notification. The sheriff would have come personally, especially for the attorney general. “If he is here to notify you, let him notify you. Then tell him you’re grieving and you need some time to be alone with your family. You know how to do that. But get him out of here.”
“Okay.”
Landry watched Franklin get out of the golf cart and meet with the sheriff. He watched them talk. They talked only for three or four minutes. Then the sheriff climbed back into his SUV, made a K-turn, and drove away.
Kay drove to the octagon house and parked. They got out and Franklin led the way. The Haddox dogs appeared out of nowhere and followed them up the steps, but Franklin didn’t let them come inside.
Kay had once showed her the house, just a quick glimpse of the first and second floor and the cupola. She noticed the wheelchair ramp for her grandfather, going down to the basement. The basement wasn’t really a basement, but a half basement—there were half windows to the outside.
Her grandfather was in there, somewhere.
She’d never met him, either. The day she came, he had “taken a bad turn,” and wasn’t seeing visitors.
Jolie found herself amazed that she had spent most of her life not twenty miles away, and she had never met her grandfather or her uncle.
The first floor was as Jolie remembered it: a cleared space with a stairway to the back and an open kitchen and a closed bathroom. The windows, empty of window dressing. Franklin bustled past them, went to a closet under the staircase, and started pulling out folding chairs. He handed one to Kay and one to Jolie. Took his own chair to the center of room.
“What the hell are we doing?” Kay said.
Franklin stopped, mid-unfolding, and looked at her. Finally he said, “We’re to wait here.”
“Wait here for what?”
He looked at Kay again. Jolie could see him thinking. It put her in mind of her computer when it was trying to process a big file. Frank’s disk was full. She sensed he had the answers just behind his tightly closed lips, but was afraid that it would be overwhelming, would shock them—so he said nothing at all.
“Franklin?”
He looked at Kay. “We just have to.”
“That’s no answer.”
“Shut up, will you, Kay? I didn’t ask for you to come here.”
An argument ensued, all the old slights and hurts coming up. Jolie had been witness to and part of many family arguments in New Mexico, and she’d had plenty with her dad and with her husband. Years of intimate knowledge of one another, plenty of history, lots of cues that Jolie would miss. They sparred without really saying anything at all. “Why should I shut up?” “Because you don’t know what you’re talking about.” “Then why don’t you tell me what’s going on?” “Look, it’s complicated.” And the kicker: “My wife just died, Riley’s mother—can’t you cut me some slack?”
Jolie sat and watched and listened. Franklin kept looking out the windows. Went from one to another to another. Nervous. Worse than nervous. Scared. He checked his watch. He used his cell phone, and even that was secretive, the way he held it, the way he turned away, his mouth pressed close to the phone. Agitated, arguing with whoever was on the other end. Slammed the phone shut. He looked at turns nervous, angry, impatient, terrified, annoyed, and resigned. Pacing the room, going to the windows, calling someone and getting no answer.
Jolie kept her eye on him because he was the only one who knew anything. His actions confirmed her suspicion that he was in over his head. She wondered where Franklin was in the food chain. Pretty low, judging from the way he was acting.
She knew two things: he was terrified of someone, and he was waiting for something to happen.
She’d left her primary weapon behind—it didn’t seem appropriate, coming here. But she had the Walther PPK .380 concealed in an ankle holster. She needed to be ready for whatever happened. And something would happen, she was sure of it. She leaned forward so that her elbows rested on her knees. That way she could grab the Walther if she needed it.
Riley and Zoe had been sitting together, but now Riley got up and went to be near her dad. She hovered near him like a moon to a planet. When he went to one window and looked out, she hung back but shadowed him.
Franklin told Riley to go sit down. Riley reacted the way Jolie had always seen her react. She got into a snit, said a few belligerent things, and stalked back to her chair next to Zoe. Bounced back up and started shadowing her father again.
His moon. Smaller and weaker and left out in the cold and the dark.
Jolie felt sorry for her. The only thing that mattered in her life was the man who ignored her. He never once looked in her direction. He stared out the window, checked his cell phone, paced. He did everything but look at his daughter, the one person who shared his loss.
Jolie thought how sad this was.
Then a chair came flying through the window in an explosion of glass.
54
A figure stepped in through the window. Black clothing, face covered by a balaclava. What riveted Jolie’s attention most was the rifle aimed at them. Aimed at her.
Quick calculation: no way could she grab the Walther before he shot her.
“Facedown on the floor! Do it now!”
Jolie dropped. There was nothing else to do. He had the rifle.
She heard the feet crunching on glass shards. The next thing she felt was the pressure of a rifle barrel against the back of her neck.
“Do not move!”
He jerked her arms behind her back and wrapped her wrists, once, twice, and then the sharp tearing sound of tape. She’d handcuffed bad guys a thousand times, but he was quicker. Much quicker. He frisked her equally as fast. Confiscated her purse, her cell, and her Walther PPK. He kept the Walther and tossed everything else out the broken window.
A ripping sound as he tore tape off the roll. It looked like packing tape. He wound the tape around her ankles, then rested the gun muzzle against the nape of her neck again and whispered, “Stay still.”
She would. No question about that.
“Be quiet.”
She would. You could hear a pin drop.
Then he was gone. She heard the
tape ripping, again and again—everyone taped, wrists and ankles. She saw his boots go by—combat boots. And the rifle—she saw the long barrel when he hunkered down to tape Kay.
One arm was silver.
She realized the silver was duct tape. Wound all the way from the thumb and wrist up to the elbow.
An injury.
She felt the rifle muzzle again. “You a cop?”
“Yes.”
“Sit up.”
It was awkward, but she did. He aimed the rifle at her face—point-blank. For a moment, she believed this was it. Say your prayers. What would it feel like when the bullet hit? He would be good, so she would feel nothing at all. She usually tried not to think about death, but now it was all she thought about.
He pointed the rifle at the ground. “You do exactly as I say. You hear me? Exactly as I say.”
She felt absurdly grateful. If he had a ring, she’d kiss it. Instant Stockholm syndrome.
“Daddy, why’s he doing this?”
Riley.
“Daddy! You’re not going to let him get away with this? Do something!”
The silence was resounding.
“You have to tell him to stop!”
“Puddin’—”
“Quiet!”
“Don’t you tell me to—”
Their captor took a step in Franklin’s direction and aimed the barrel at the attorney general’s face.
His voice was low, but it sent chills up Jolie’s spine. “Quiet,” he said to Riley. “Last time.”
“Stop here.”
Jolie stood at the bottom of the shallow stairs into the basement, the last in line. Their captor touched her shoulder with his rifle muzzle. “In there.”
He opened the door to a cramped room containing a hospital bed and an oxygen tank. Roses were everywhere. On the bed table, on the ledge by the window, in pots on the floor. The scent was heavy, cloying, and underneath there was the underlying medicinal smell you found in hospitals.
“What’s all that noise? Who’s there?” The bathroom door opened, and a man in pajamas shuffled in. A tall man, good-looking for a ninety-year-old. He was tanned, with white hair and a rugged face, marred only by the cannula for the massive oxygen tank parked by the bed.
He stopped and looked at them. “Who are you?” he asked.
“Dad—”
“Shut up, Frankie. Who are you?” he said to their captor. “Are you a ninja?”
Their captor lifted his rifle in reply.
Jolie said, “He’s defenseless. You don’t need to shoot him.”
Their captor nodded toward the oxygen canister. “I wasn’t going to shoot him. I was going to hit him.” He said to Jolie’s grandfather, “This is your lucky day. You’ve got company.”
“I don’t want company. I’m sick of company. Like that asshole Jason. What a sanctimonious little turd. He won’t even let me have my one cigarette a day.” He looked straight at Jolie. “Dorie, can you get me a cigarette?”
He’d mistaken her for her mother.
“Dorie, go get your dad a cigarette, will you?”
“I can’t,” she said. “Oxygen.”
“You think I’ll blow us to kingdom come, do you? That’s an old wives’ tale. I’ve smoked plenty of times and never had a problem.” He squinted at her. “What’s that getup? You used to dress so nice—you had style.”
Jolie had no clue how to talk to a man with dementia. Disabuse him of the idea she was her mother? Humor him? She wasn’t sure, so she kept silent.
“Dorie, is the kid all right?” Franklin Haddox II canted his head like a curious bird. “You should bring her here. I want to know for sure she’s okay.”
Jolie had no idea what he was talking about.
Her captor shifted his feet. Bored, but putting up with it. It came to her with clarity that he would not kill them—at least not now. Why would he herd them down here when he could have killed them all at any time before this?
Kay said, “Granddad, how are your roses?”
Her voice was too high and too bright.
“My roses are fine.” He dismissed Kay with a look and turned to Jolie. “Dorie, you haven’t seen my hothouse. Maybe that would get you over your funk. You never even asked to see the rose I named for my grandchild.”
“Grandchild?” Kay asked.
“Jolie! Who did you think I meant?” The old man looked daggers at Kay. “Who did you think we were talking about? I named a rose for you too, so I don’t see what all the fuss is all about.”
Kay said, “Granddad, I think you’re confusing Dorie with her—”
“No, no, no! She needs to hear this. Dorie, do you have any idea how much it cost to buy off all those people? Everybody and their brother. Cops, public records, the paramedics. I don’t know what got into you! You were such a sweet, lovely child. Now look at you. I hear you’re a cop.”
“Granddad?” Kay said. “Jolie’s the cop, remember? Not Dorie.”
“I know it’s Jolie. Are you trying to make me look bad? I know all about you,” he said, looking at Jolie. “You’re a detective, and you want nothing to do with your own family.” He pointed a crooked finger at her. “I didn’t like your father, but he and I saw eye to eye on this. We did the right thing. He might have been a goddamn fool, but he was smart enough to know who to come running to when he needed help. We did the right thing.”
“Right thing?” Jolie asked.
The old man frowned at her.
“Who are you?”
Landry stayed in the old man’s room longer than he’d planned to, drawn in by the strange conversation between the old man and the female cop. The dynamic intrigued him.
He went outside and took stock of the situation. First thing, he blocked the causeway west of the gatehouse by parking Frank’s two Suburbans crosswise. That took care of land. But he still had to deal with air and sea.
He glassed the boats in the bay. A couple of fishermen were out early. The people he was worried about could be on those boats now, pretending to be fishermen. It was what he would do. There was no other sign of movement in the air, sea, or land, except for the dogs. They fell in with him as he scouted the island, following him back to the octagon house. He brought them inside and went to the kitchen on the first floor. There was some meat in the freezer. He defrosted it in the microwave, led the dogs outside, and fed them. He fed them a little at a time. He’d go back inside, get more meat, and call them with, “Come dogs!” By the third time they came running. By the fifth time, they were camped outside the front door.
The dogs would alert them if anyone came their way—an inexpensive alarm system.
Then he found the right spot in a lushly vegetated patch of garden with a good view of the water and the road. High enough to see the two obvious points of entry—a good place to set up as a sniper.
He settled on his stomach in the dark shade of a royal palm and looked through the sight once again at the boats. The fishermen, if they were fishermen, were fishing. But while it was still bright and sunny, he could see the chop on the water and clouds massing when he looked toward the Gulf. There were more boats when he looked again, drifting in, and he wondered if there were a lot more on Cardamone’s team than just four.
55
Jolie tried to find a way out of her grandfather’s room, but they were locked in. The basement windows were too narrow to get through. Whatever their captor had pushed up against the door was too heavy to move.
She wondered why he didn’t just kill them.
She would have.
Jolie went through his actions so far. He had shocked them by throwing the chair through the window. He’d taped them up quickly, paying particular attention to her because he knew she was a cop.
Control and intimidation.
Everything he did from the moment he broke through the window had been calculated to keep them off balance, cowed. He wanted them to depend on him, and only him.
Which meant he wanted them for something.
Jolie glanced at Franklin, who sat against the wall, his feet out in front of him, his head pressed into the corner. Riley beside him. She’d stopped crying, stopped talking. Maybe she was in shock. As Jolie watched, Riley burrowed herself deeper into her father’s body, so he had to raise his chin and rest it on the top of her head.
Jolie wondered if Franklin knew their captor. Something in his body language. A certain…familiarity. She thought back to the scene between Riley and the man in black, the way she talked to him.
There was something in her voice—resentment?
No. She was affronted.
Riley told her father to order their captor to leave, but Frank did nothing.
Could this have been planned? Done for their benefit? Like a play?
Ridiculous thought, but it nagged her. What if it was for their benefit, and then it went wrong?
She needed to get Frank talking. There was plenty to talk about, so she started with the subject that brought her here.
“Franklin, what happened to Nathan Dial?”
He didn’t respond. But Riley glared at her.
“Franklin? Did the vice president kill Nathan Dial?”
“Leave my dad alone!”
“Franklin?”
He looked at Jolie with the eyes of a resentful child. “What do I care? My life is over. My wife is dead, I’ve failed my own family…” He stared at the floor, every line in his body saying, I give up.
“No, you haven’t, Daddy. It’s her fault.”
Jolie would have loved to hear Riley’s take on why it was her fault. “Just tell me, Franklin. For the family’s sake. Did the vice president kill Nathan Dial?”
He gave her a look of annoyance. “What difference does it make now? That’s all water under the bridge.”
“Not for his family it isn’t.”
“Who cares? He was a godless homosexual.”
“His family cares. Did it ever occur to you, Franklin, that all of this might be connected?”
Kay said, “Jolie, what are you talking about?”
“You heard him. The vice president killed a young man named Nathan Dial.”
“Vice President Pintek? You can’t be serious! I don’t believe that for one minute. Is that why you came with me? You didn’t want to help with Riley, you wanted to sneak in here and interrogate my uncle!”
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