Season of Fear

by Brain Freeman

  He said nothing.

  ‘I suppose you’re going to ask how I could have kept this from you,’ she went on. ‘It’s a fair question. I’ve thought about it myself a great deal. Then and now.’

  Cab shook his head. ‘Obviously, I understand. I don’t like it, but I understand.’

  ‘Still, she was your child, too.’

  He wasn’t prepared for how that one sentence cut open his heart and left him bleeding. She. A girl. He’d been summoning his courage to ask the question, and now she had answered it for him. She recognized what she’d done, and her face filled with sincere distress. ‘I’m sorry,’ she continued. ‘I didn’t mean to break it like that, but I thought you would have seen it in my file.’

  ‘I didn’t look that closely.’

  ‘Well, yes. She. A daughter.’

  He shrugged. The gesture was false. ‘A daughter I never would have known anyway. I suppose it doesn’t matter.’

  ‘Of course it matters, Cab!’ Diane exclaimed. ‘And for what it’s worth, I apologize. Back then, I had no choice but to hide the truth from you, and from Tarla, too. It doesn’t make it right, but you can appreciate the situation I was in. After that, well, I have no excuses to give you. You deserved the truth, but I never sought out the right moment. I didn’t want to revisit what happened. Even so, a day doesn’t go by that I don’t think about her.’

  His emotions betrayed him. Whatever he wanted to say lodged in his throat and went nowhere. His eyes felt wet.

  ‘I never thought it compromised a strong man to cry,’ she told him. ‘I’ve had years to deal with this. It’s new to you.’

  Cab wanted to ask what he needed to ask and then escape. He cleared his throat. ‘There are things I need to know.’

  ‘I’m sure. It changes everything, doesn’t it, knowing what a sick son of a bitch my husband was? Why do you think I’ve worked so hard to keep the truth hidden? I’d like to tell you that Birch was sorry for what he’d done. Maybe for a day or two, he was, but then he went back to being the man I knew. Utterly self-absorbed. Utterly heartless.’

  ‘And yet …’

  ‘And yet I covered for him. That’s right. Was I weak? Back then, yes, I probably was. I thought it was my fault. That’s the way victims are programmed to think. Besides, I was the one who invited you into my bed. I had to accept the consequences.’

  ‘Not those consequences,’ Cab said.

  ‘No. Looking back, I was a fool about a lot of things. Some lessons are hard to learn.’

  ‘Diane, I need to ask you about the murders,’ he told her.

  ‘It was not Drew,’ she snapped. ‘There’s simply no way he was involved. Yes, I told my son what happened to me. Yes, he hated Birch. Did he want to kill him? I’m sure he did, but Drew didn’t have the inner strength to do something like that. You’re wrong, Cab.’

  ‘I believe you. Drew wasn’t the shooter. Whoever pulled the trigger had a calculating mind. He knew exactly what he was doing.’

  ‘Then what else can I tell you?’ Diane asked.

  ‘Drew doesn’t fit the profile of the murderer,’ Cab went on, ‘but Frank Macy does.’

  Diane cocked her head in surprise. He tried to read her eyes to see whether the surprise was genuine or an act, but whatever she felt was quickly subsumed by her bitterness toward the man. Her knuckles tightened around the crystal glass in her hand.

  ‘Why on earth would Macy kill Birch?’

  ‘Maybe because someone paid him,’ Cab said.

  Diane slowly put down the glass. She closed her eyes for a long second. He could see her chest swell with a deep breath. She pushed back her chair and got up, and she wandered into the dead center of the room, directly below the chandelier. She crossed her arms and stared at the floor. Her feet were bare on the brown carpet.

  ‘Tarla saw us,’ she said. ‘She saw me with Macy, didn’t she?’

  ‘Yes, she did.’

  ‘I thought I caught a glimpse of her on the trail. That poor dear. All these years, she wondered if I arranged to have Birch killed, and she never said a word to me about it. She never asked me for the truth.’

  ‘She knew what Birch did to you.’

  ‘Still, that’s a true friend.’ She looked up at Cab. ‘I wasn’t paying off Macy to commit murder. That’s not what the money was for.’

  ‘It was two days before Labor Day, Diane.’

  ‘I know. I can understand your suspicion.’

  ‘Then explain it to me. Why did you pay Frank Macy?’

  He wasn’t prepared for her answer.

  ‘I wanted him to get me a gun,’ Diane replied.

  ‘A gun? Why?’

  Diane sat down on the settee. She looked small with the windows framed behind her. ‘That’s a good question. I’m not entirely sure I know the answer. At the time, I planned to kill myself. I can’t tell you the kind of despair I felt. I couldn’t admit publicly what Birch had done to me, but I wasn’t sure I could go on living with him. Knowing what he’d taken from me. I had visions of putting that gun in my mouth, but …’

  ‘But what?’ Cab asked.

  ‘I have to be honest. I thought about killing Birch, too. Maybe I would have killed him and then killed myself. I don’t know. However, I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t thinking about murdering my husband.’ She shook her head. ‘Despite that, I didn’t kill him. Maybe with a few more days, I would have screwed up the courage and done it, but someone beat me to it.’

  Cab could read her face. He knew she was telling him the truth. ‘Did Macy get you the gun?’

  ‘He did.’

  ‘Do you still have it?’

  A tear slipped down her cheek. ‘No. Drew found it. It was the gun that he …’

  Cab nodded. ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘I blame Frank Macy for his death, but in the end, I have to blame myself, too.’

  ‘Who else knows that Macy sold you a gun?’ Cab asked.

  ‘Only Macy and me, I assume. And now you and Tarla. Macy could have told someone, but it wouldn’t have been in his interest to admit it. I’m sure the gun wasn’t legally obtained.’

  ‘What about Ramona Cortes?’ he asked. ‘Did she contact you? Did she try to use your transaction with Macy as leverage? Defense attorneys will use any ammunition available to them to get their client a better deal.’

  ‘Indeed they will.’

  ‘Did she?’ he repeated.

  Diane trembled, like a sapling caught in the storm. ‘I don’t know why you’re asking about this. There’s no reason to think Macy had anything to do with Birch’s death. You should just drop it.’

  Cab got up and walked over to her. The black windows felt dangerous. He knelt in front of the settee.

  ‘Maybe Macy didn’t kill Birch. Or maybe we’re simply missing something. Either way, Macy is in the middle of whatever’s going on right now. Justin was looking at him, and now Justin’s dead. Deacon Piper is missing. The question is why.’

  ‘Deacon?’ Her face turned ashen. ‘Deacon is missing? When? What happened?’

  ‘Caprice says someone took him from his house last night.’

  Diane’s hand flew to her mouth. ‘Oh, my God.’

  She leaned forward and put her arms tightly around him. He could feel the curves of her body pressing on him through the thin robe. It was awkward; they felt like strangers. Strangers who had slept together. Who had conceived a child.

  ‘What’s going on, Diane?’ he asked.

  She took a deep breath. He had to remind himself who she was and what this meant to her. She was a candidate for the most powerful office in the state. There were people who would do anything to bring her down. And here he was, asking for her worst secrets.

  ‘I did something illegal,’ she murmured, as if speaking softly would make her innocent. As if the truth would still be hidden.

  He gently eased her away from him. ‘What did you do?’

  ‘You have to understand my situation,’ she said. ‘After Drew died, I went
crazy. I’d lost everything. I needed to blame someone. I became obsessed with Frank Macy. I wanted him punished, but nobody could stop him. I worked with the police to get drug charges filed, but he walked away with probation. All I could think about was getting him behind bars. It was like I couldn’t go on with my life until I’d avenged Drew’s death. I was willing to do anything in my power to put Macy away. And you know – by then – I had a lot of power. A lot of money. It made me think I could do whatever I wanted, and there would be no consequences.’

  ‘What happened?’ Cab asked quietly.

  ‘There was a killing in the town of Pass-a-Grille. A bartender was assaulted and died of his injuries. There were no witnesses. It was in a bar that Frank Macy frequented. Macy knew the bartender. Don’t you see, this was my chance. Finally, I had him. So I arranged to have DNA evidence planted in the alley and in Macy’s apartment. Macy had no alibi. He was selling drugs that night. You have to love the irony, don’t you? He must have suspected I was behind it. Ramona called me, and she didn’t say it outright, but she made it clear that she thought I’d paid someone on the police to make sure Macy was framed. However, even she couldn’t make this one go away. Macy took a plea and did eight years. Less than he deserved for what he did to Drew, but at least I had a measure of justice.’

  Cab closed his eyes. ‘Diane—’

  ‘I know. It was wrong. You have to remember, I’m in politics. I convinced myself that the ends justified the means.’

  ‘You didn’t do this alone,’ he said.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Who helped you? Was it someone with the police?’ Then Cab realized that he already knew the answer. ‘Deacon Piper,’ he said softly. ‘It was Deacon, wasn’t it? He planted the evidence.’

  Diane nodded. ‘I needed a spy, you see. Someone I could trust. Deacon knew how to do these things. He handled everything for me. It was a private thing between the two of us. But if he really is missing—’

  ‘Then it means Frank Macy knows what happened,’ Cab said. ‘He’s out for revenge. On both of you.’

  42

  Dead eyes stared at him from inside the trunk of the car.

  Through the overnight hours, rigor had made the body stiff, like an alabaster statue in a museum, fingers frozen into claws. He saw the webbed purple bruise on the forehead where the corner of the flashlight had fractured the skull. Hungry black bugs had already swarmed the hole in his abdomen and begun to feed. Pieces of intestine peeked between their wriggling bodies like a messy plate of pasta.

  He retrieved the aluminum pistol case and blew two hitchhiking insects onto the garage floor with a puff of breath. He opened the case and retrieved the gun, which was cradled in gray foam. Checked it. Readied it. The butt felt smooth and sure in his gloved hand. As it had once before.

  Ten years ago.

  It felt as if he were back in the orange grove. He could feel himself marching in the sandy soil. The crickets chattered warnings that no one else understood. Each hot breath under the hood rebounded in his face. He remembered the sense of freedom as he broke into the clearing. Saw the lights beckoning him. Heard the swell of voices.

  He remembered odd things from that night. The first to die, the citrus farmer, had crumbs in his mustache from something he’d eaten. No one had said a thing to him about it, and so he died with pastry on his face. What was his name? He didn’t know; he hadn’t even read the news reports. They say you always remember the first, the look on the face, the sounds of dying, the way the soul gets ready to flee the body. All of that was true, but of course, the man on the dais wasn’t his first.

  He remembered his first. He remembered Alison.

  He replaced the pistol case in the car and shut the trunk, obscuring the body. When he checked the clock on his phone, he saw that it was ten o’clock. His nerves frayed. Acid rose in his throat. It was soon. It was almost time. Chayla was a bonus, as if the devil had a sense of humor.

  He rehearsed everything that would happen next. Walk two blocks to the estate. Head for the lights of the sunroom, where they would be waiting for him, unaware. That was the most important part of what he needed to do, and yet it would take the least time. The hood. The explosions of the gun. The bodies falling. All of that would be over and done in seconds, and he would be on his way. He knew how it would go, because he had done it before.

  Back to the foreclosure house for the last time. Take the car. Drive. Drive south, through the storm, on the deserted highways; drive all the way to the Everglades, the wilderness where bodies became food for the alligators. He could dump him there, and it would be over. His work would be done.

  He stared at the newspaper articles thumbtacked to the bulletin board. His collection of greatest hits.

  FAIRMONT TO ENTER GOVERNOR’S RACE

  ONE YEAR LATER, MORE TRAGEDY: FAIRMONT STUNNED BY SON’S SUICIDE

  FRANK MACY GETS EIGHT YEARS ON MANSLAUGHTER PLEA

  COMMON WAY FOUNDATION INFLUENCE GROWS – AND SO DOES CONTROVERSY

  He’d thought about leaving the articles behind to taunt the police, but he didn’t think it was necessary now. They would know where the trail led. They would know, but just like ten years ago, they would find only roads that led nowhere.

  He shoved the gun in his belt and removed a cigarette lighter from his pocket. With a flick of his thumb, he lit a flame, and then he yanked the first article from the wall, leaving behind a torn scrap of paper. He held a corner to the flame and watched the fire catch, running and spreading, incinerating the pulp to gray ash. As the fire neared his fingers, he let it fall to the floor, where he kicked at the ash with his toe and watched the fragments float. He pulled another article and burned it, and then another and another, and finally, the garage was redolent of smoke and fire, and the bulletin board was empty except for the one article on which he’d scrawled a single word.

  Revenge.

  ‘Ashes to ashes,’ said a voice from the doorway.

  43

  Peach clenched the wheel as she flew across the Gandy Bridge.

  She felt as if the wind under her tires would lift her like a Cessna and pitch her into the bay. Despite her efforts to keep the car straight, the heavy Thunderbird zigzagged back and forth between the lanes. She was alone heading west, with no more than a few stray headlights shining in the opposite direction as people escaped the Gulf. The rain belched from the sky, looking like a tsunami carrying the sea into her face. Individual drops sped like fleeing dots of light across her windshield. The normally placid bay surged with white foam, and waves as high as houses spewed across the low-lying bridge.

  She breathed a sigh of relief when the causeway crossed back onto land. The storm surge had overrun the beaches, and she could see surf pawing at the shoulders of the highway. Justin’s safe house was less than a mile west. When she spotted the Crab Shack restaurant, she turned left, splashing through four inches of rippling water as she drove to the very end of the deserted road.

  No one else was around. She didn’t see a light or a car anywhere. It was just her and the storm.

  When she got out of the car, the water was up to her ankles. The limbs of the oak tree hanging over the house groaned with the wind. She mounted the fence with Curtis Ritchie’s equipment bundled in her arms, and then she kicked her way toward the porch. The air was full of brine. Her lips tasted of salt. She wrenched open the screen door and watched a snake slither in panic down the concrete steps into the water.

  Inside, dampness hung in the living room. She could see patches of black mold growing near the air vents. Cockroaches shot for the walls as she stood in the middle of the room, dripping on the carpet. Everything was as she remembered it, cluttered with the debris left by whoever had searched this place. She didn’t think anyone had been here since her last visit. She checked the clock on her phone and wondered when Annalie would arrive.

  Peach deposited Curtis Ritchie’s laptop and digital phone on a bruised antique coffee table, marred with circular water stains. She st
udied the compact house and wondered if there was really anything to find here. The search had been thorough. She eyed the ceiling, but there was no crawlspace overhead. The drawers and cabinets in the kitchen were wide open. So was the refrigerator, which had been raided by bugs. The room smelled of spoiled meat.

  She returned to Justin’s bedroom, where she’d found the newspaper article that had led her to Frank Macy. It had been hidden under the filing cabinet. She toppled the filing cabinet with a crash, scattering more roaches. She’d thought there might be papers taped to the underside, but she was wrong. Frustrated, she sat on the ruins of Justin’s mattress.

  ‘You should have told me what you were doing,’ she said aloud.

  The photograph of herself in front of the Crab Shack restaurant was on the floor in its small broken frame. She bent down and retrieved it. Pieces of glass sprinkled to the carpet like jewels. She removed the photograph from the frame, but nothing was hidden behind it, and nothing was written on the back of the photo paper. It was a print he’d made at Walgreens. She examined the details in the photo, noting that this was the original, unlike the attachment he’d planned to send in his e-mail. The restaurant number was unaltered. So was the arrow on the roof.

  She returned the photo to the frame and carefully picked away the remaining glass. She put it back on the little table in front of the window, the way Justin would have had it. He would have been able to stare it as he worked on his computer. She hoped that looking at her made him smile, but it wasn’t a particularly flattering picture, with that big goofy smile on her face, hair greasy and unwashed, arm high in the air with her thumb pointing behind her. She remembered telling Justin that all she needed were checkered overalls, and she could have been standing outside a Bob’s Big Boy restaurant.

  Peach got up and went to Justin’s laminate desk. The dismembered computer was unusable. So was the smashed monitor. She sat in his chair, which faced the window. If he’d left her something, it might have been small, like a flash drive, but she found nothing but dusty cables inside the desk drawers. She knew that whoever had been inside the house had stripped the place long before she got here.