I turned into the driveway and saw Luther’s Cadillac snug against the door of the garage exactly where it had been when Wakefield and I were here Monday. I inched forward, following Tommy Lee’s advice to park as far in the driveway as possible. Not only would I be in the darkest spot near the house, but I would barricade the Cadillac from any chance of escape.
As I stopped, the flaw in the plan hit me. How was I supposed to get into the trunk of the Cadillac? I didn’t have a key. Had it been on Sandra’s body?
I pressed the flashlight app on my cell phone. Tyrell had probably been driving so I leaned over the console and swept the beam over the passenger’s floorboard. The gold clasp of a small black purse gleamed in the light. I found the Cadillac’s key on top of its contents.
I was out of the car in two seconds, and, as feared, the courtesy lights turned the Chrysler into a giant light bulb. I ran to the Cadillac, pressed the trunk release, and pushed the rising lid up as fast as I could.
Danny Swift lay on his side, his arms and feet hog-tied behind his back. Duct tape still covered his mouth. His eyes were shut and he didn’t appear to be breathing.
“Oh, God, no,” I muttered.
His eyes flickered open and he twisted his head toward me. It was three thirty in the morning. The boy had been sleeping. As his eyes focused, a tremor ran through his body. I must have looked a sight with my camo-painted face and bloody jacket. He might have thought I was Tyrell.
“You’re safe, Danny. I’m getting you out of here.” I lifted the boy over my shoulder and ran to the Chrysler.
“Godspeed,” I heard behind me, and turned to see Kevin crouching, pistol drawn, positioned between me and the house. I tossed Danny across the backseat, jumped behind the wheel, and slammed the transmission into reverse.
Chapter Twenty-six
Wakefield’s patrol car sat broadside across the exit lane to the right of the gatehouse. A pickup truck that must have belonged to the guard barricaded the entry side. If a co-conspirator managed to elude Tommy Lee and Kevin, he’d have to crash through the decorative stone fence bordering Glendale Forest’s landscaped entrance.
Wakefield stood behind the hood of his vehicle and held up his left hand like a traffic cop. He kept his right close to his holstered revolver. I braked and cracked my door enough to activate the interior courtesy lights.
“It’s me,” I shouted. “I’ve got Danny Swift.”
Immediately, Wakefield ran to assist me.
Joey Abbott emerged from the corner of the gatehouse. “What do you need?”
“A knife to cut his ropes.”
Abbott hustled toward his pickup.
I spoke into my phone. “I’m with Wakefield. Advise if you can.” I cupped my hand over my ear to block out any other sound.
“About to enter the house,” Tommy Lee whispered. “Take the boy to the hospital. Use Wakefield’s car.”
“Copy that. Be careful.”
I looked at Danny who was bent like a pretzel on the Chrysler’s backseat. “You’re safe. We’ll get you out of those ropes.”
The boy just stared at me, eyes wide with fright.
“Will this do?” Joey Abbott handed me a Marine Corps KA-BAR knife, handle first.
I slashed the cord pulling Danny’s bound feet and hands together. He groaned as his strained muscles relaxed.
“Lie still and I’ll cut your hands and feet free.” Carefully I wedged the black blade between his wrists. The yellow nylon rope was tinged with dried blood where Danny’s struggle had cut deep into his skin. I sliced upward and severed the cords. Then I repeated the action with his ankles, noticing that dried blood also caked his socks.
“I’ll carry you to the patrol car. We’re going to the hospital.”
“What about the duct tape across his mouth,” Wakefield asked.
The broad strip of gray tape stretched from earlobe to earlobe.
“I’d rather take care of it at the emergency room. They might have some kind of solvent to remove it without ripping his skin.” I looked at the boy. “Understand? We’ll get that tape off you at the hospital.”
He nodded and the panic that had possessed his face melted away.
“Good. Wakefield, open your front passenger door. He’ll ride beside me.”
This time I more carefully slid my arms under Danny’s shoulders and knees and carried him to the patrol car. When he was securely belted in the seat, I handed Wakefield the keys to the Chrysler. “You let me know as soon as you hear something from Tommy Lee.”
“Will do. You want me to call ahead to the ER?”
“No. I can do it from the road. You stay ready to help Tommy Lee and Kevin.”
I gunned the patrol car and we left the tense scene at Glendale Forest in the rearview mirror.
During the six-minute race to the hospital, I managed three calls. The first went to Susan telling her to alert the ER and find a pediatrician in the middle of the night.
The second call was to Detective Sergeant Romero reporting Swifty was safe and headed for medical evaluation. I knew he’d want tell the boy’s parents, but I advised him to wait till I had more information before he suggested they drive to Gainesboro. I promised to give him an update as soon as I could. Romero said his check of Sandra’s room in the casino hotel found evidence that Tyrell spent time there. Sex and money—always a recipe for disaster.
My third call fulfilled a promise. Melissa Bigham was sitting by her phone at three thirty in the morning. We spoke for twenty seconds and she was on her way to Cherokee.
As I pulled up to the door of the emergency room, three medical personnel hustled out with a wheelchair. I stood back and let their expertise take over. The nurse, physician, and orderly looked familiar, probably because Susan must have introduced them at some point in the past.
The nurse smiled reassuringly. “Barry, just park your car at the end of the building. I’ll tell the desk you’re to come back to the examination room.”
Before I could move the car, my cell phone rang. Tommy Lee’s number flashed in the screen.
“Just got to the hospital,” I said without bothering with a hello. “They’re examining Danny now. You OK?”
“There was nobody there,” Tommy Lee said. “Sandra and Tyrell left him unguarded. Kevin and I figure they didn’t kill him in case something went wrong at the exchange and they needed proof he was still alive. But I believe if Tyrell had shot Kevin, Danny would have been dead within the hour.”
“What are you going to do now?”
“Unless you need me, I’m heading to Cherokee. Looks like Sandra and Tyrell concocted this whole god damned nightmare on their own. But the threads might lead elsewhere. I’m going to bring in Lindsay Boyce and the FBI. We’ve got evidence of an interstate crime of bid rigging between State Senator Eckles and G. A. Bridges. Always better to have the feds hit a state politician. It will be very difficult for Eckles to squash that investigation.”
“Did you happen to record my confrontation with Sandra?”
“Every word. I think the FBI techs will be able to boost her voice. What’s your next move?”
“Wait on Danny’s medical evaluation.”
“If they need to keep him, you go home and get some rest. You did a hell of a job tonight.”
Maybe it was the phone connection, maybe not, but Tommy Lee’s voice broke on his final sentence. I could receive no higher praise.
I found Danny Swift sitting on a gurney in a small, curtained-off area. The staff had already removed his clothes and dressed him in a hospital gown. The doctor and nurse were carefully pulling the duct tape free, liberally applying some clear liquid to Danny’s skin during the process. In the brighter light, I was able to read their ID badges: Alexander Holden and Barbara Spellman.
As soon as the strip of tape cleared Danny’s lips, he said, “I want to see my mom and dad. I wan
t to go home.” His voice was high, not yet deepened by puberty.
“Well, tiger,” Dr. Holden said, “we want you to do just that. But we’ve got to check you out first.”
Danny looked to me for help.
“Let them do their job, Danny, and I promise you’ll get another ride in the police car when it’s time to leave.”
The curtain pulled open behind me. Susan entered followed by an older man wearing a wrinkled shirt under a lab coat.
“This is Charles Marsh,” Susan said. “He’s a pediatrician.”
Holden stepped back. “You want to take over, Charles?”
“No, Alex. You keep on.” He smiled at Danny. “You’re in good hands, kid. I’ll get Barry to brief me on what happened.” Marsh held open the curtain. “Why don’t we talk down the hall?”
“Don’t go,” Danny pleaded.
I crossed the room and placed my hand on his head. “I’m not going anywhere they can’t reach me faster than you can run, Swifty.”
A faint smile appeared on the boy’s bruised lips.
I gave Marsh and Susan the story of what we thought had happened, and that we wouldn’t officially talk with Swifty until he’d been medically cleared. My hope was that the exam would conclude he was physically fit enough to go home. After the trauma of abduction and separation, his parents and familiar surroundings were what he wanted most.
“I agree,” Marsh said, “provided he hasn’t suffered any physical abuse other than what I saw on his hands and feet. Let me confer with Dr. Holden and talk to the boy a few minutes. I suggest that when you do interview him officially, you have a child psychologist sit in. He or she is trained to spot signs you might miss.” He turned to Susan. “Why don’t you and Barry go to the waiting room? I’ll be out to brief you shortly.” Without waiting for an answer, he left us in the hallway.
“Does he know his stuff?” I asked.
“Absolutely. When we have kids, I wouldn’t want anybody but Charles to be their doctor.”
“Then that answers that question.”
“Good, because I have one for you.”
“What’s that?”
“Why do you have camo paint smeared all over your face?”
I took her by the arm and escorted her down the hall. “Let me tell you an interesting story, Doctor Clayton.”
Twenty minutes later, Dr. Marsh and Dr. Holden entered the deserted waiting room with visible proof of their evaluation. Each of them held a handle of Danny Swift’s wheelchair. The boy was back in his clothes with bandages wrapped around his wrists and ankles. The doctors wore the brightest smiles I’d ever seen at four thirty in the morning.
Again, Danny sat beside me in the patrol car. Susan joined us and rode in the back.
Danny was silent, leaning his forehead against the side window and staring into the darkness, probably reliving all he’d been through. I didn’t push him to talk.
Clouds started moving in from the west. The full moon, now setting behind the ridgeline, grew fuzzy. Shadows merged into uniform darkness and soon my vision ended at the outer boundaries of the headlights.
“A woman killed Eddie Wolfe.” Danny made the unprompted accusation in barely a whisper.
“Did you see it?”
“No. Eddie had me tied up in a bedroom. She came to check on me and took the pillow. She shot him. The noise was loud, but not loud enough. No one came. My mom and dad were just up the hill, but they never heard. She pointed the gun at me and made me get in her trunk. It was still dark. No one saw.”
For the first time, a sob broke his voice. I couldn’t image what it would be like to be forced into a trunk less than a hundred feet from your home.
I needed to say something, but I struggled for the appropriate words.
Susan came to my rescue. “You were very brave, Danny. She was a bad person. She can’t hurt you anymore.”
He sniffled. “Eddie was bad too. The lady was mad that he’d taken me. She said now they had no choice. That was just before she shot him.”
No choice. Eddie was the link to Sandra, and Danny was the link to Eddie. With both Eddie and Danny dead, the final connection would be broken.
“They?” I let the question hang.
“I guess her boyfriend. Someone named Frankie.”
“You saw him?”
“No. But she was on the phone a lot with him. Once she said, ‘I love you.’”
“They talk about anyone else?” I shifted my eyes from the road for a second and saw Danny’s tear-streaked face in the glow of the dashboard.
He thought a moment. “Someone named Malone. She said, ‘We’ll wait till you settle with Malone.’”
As Tommy Lee suspected, waiting to kill Danny had been the plan in case Kevin had balked and demanded proof the boy was still alive.
“And she talked about someone named Mack,” he said.
I slowed the car, not wanting to lose any concentration on his words. I sensed Susan lean forward behind me.
“Was Mack part of the ‘they’ she mentioned?” I asked.
“I don’t think so. She said Mack was an old fool. A fool with power he wouldn’t use to help her.”
So Mack Collins had refused to be manipulated by Sandra or her brother Darren when each had pressed him from opposite sides of the casino battle. If Collins played no role, then I didn’t think he should pay a consequence. I suspected Tyrell had gotten Sandra to do what Collins refused to do—launder money for Whitey Bulger through a construction company. And if that money stopped during the Great Recession, Sandra and Tyrell were left with a house of cards, a company desperate to stay afloat but without the criminal mastermind to save it.
“I don’t want to talk about it anymore,” Danny said.
“You don’t have to. You’ll be home soon.”
When we passed Oconaluftee Islands Park, I saw lights flashing from within the bamboo. Romero must be back at the scene with his team.
I was wrong. When I pulled into the small lot in front of the police station, the door flung open and Romero emerged like a bear from his den. He started clapping. Tommy Lee followed and Melissa Bigham was right behind him, her camera at the ready. Other officers appeared, lining the walkway and joining in the rhythmic applause.
Danny Swift strained against the seatbelt and pressed his face close to the windshield. I left the headlights burning so that he could see the rousing welcome. Mack Collins and Kevin came out side by side. Kevin started doing an Irish jig. Mack managed a smile.
Then Dot Swift and the man who must have been her husband stepped into the light. Danny squealed and tore off his seatbelt.
“Go on.” I unlocked the doors.
True to his name, Swifty flew into the arms of his parents.
Chapter Twenty-seven
“Read them and weep, gentlemen. Read them and weep.”
Archie Donovan Jr. watched the hole cards flip over and fill out Uncle Wayne’s full house of aces over jacks. Archie sat motionless as my uncle raked the pot away from him.
“I’m out,” Mayor Whitlock exclaimed. “At least I lost to somebody different for a change.”
Everyone looked at Archie and the purple Crown Royal bag that had been plump with coins and now lay before him like a deflated balloon.
“Maybe you can pay Wayne to give you some pointers,” Pete Peterson said.
“Or pray for the state legislature to adjourn so that Mack can return,” Taylor Hobbs advised.
Taylor had been the person I replaced at the game two months earlier when I’d been ambushed with the cemetery expansion. Now I was sitting in for Luther while my uncle replaced Mack. Neither of us was interested in becoming regulars, even though it was uncertain if Luther would return.
***
All of Gainesboro had rallied around Luther, no one more than Mack Collins. But the magn
itude of his daughter’s crimes weighed on Luther like an unbearable stone of grief and sorrow. The evidence against her was undeniable. Her thirty-eight revolver and pillow feather traces found in the Cadillac tied her to Eddie Wolfe’s murder.
Furthermore, soil matches confirmed Jimmy Panther had been at the casino construction site, and the recheck of Sandra’s cell phone call to her father the night of Panther’s murder placed her in Cherokee, not Atlanta. Tommy Lee admonished himself for not scrutinizing her location as closely as he should have. But, at the time, he’d been focused on Luther’s alibi and only looked where he thought he should look. All that aside, Danny Swift’s testimony would have been the nail in Sandra’s coffin.
The investigation had spread to the state level, and the FBI snared Senator Gerald Eckles in a bribery scandal after tracing cash withdrawals from G. A. Bridges that matched deposits in accounts tied to Eckles. The payments began during the Great Recession when public works projects became the primary source of revenue for construction companies. Several state DOT staffers in charge of bid reviews were also feeling the heat.
Mack Collins had so far proven to be squeaky clean. Melissa Bigham had withheld his name from her story, a story that went national, because she had no proof that Tyrell and Sandra hadn’t come together on their own. Collins appeared to have left his old life behind and rebuffed every effort to entice or threaten him back into the mob, including what I suspected was Tyrell’s final attempt to intimidate him in Cherokee. We’d enough victims as it was.
Frankie Tyrell had improvised Panther’s execution at the cemetery. When Sandra told him about the confrontation and Panther’s threatening notes and feathers, Tyrell saw a way to introduce a new motive for the crime. He didn’t care if it threw suspicion on Luther.
I think of all Sandra’s wicked deeds, the one Luther couldn’t bear was his daughter’s desecration of his wife’s grave. He would carry that abominable atrocity for the rest of his life.
Romero received proper credit for the rescue of Danny Swift. When I asked him if he’d been worried Tyrell might have spotted him earlier in the day mounting his camouflage blinds in the bamboo, he said he hadn’t carried them in. The screens of bamboo had been created in Oconaluftee Village and he’d had some children bring them to the river to use as rafts. If Tyrell spotted them, he’d see them only as rafts and not realize they could have another function. In his mind, they would always be rafts. The kids left them hidden in the bamboo and all Romero had to do was reposition them.
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