He sat for a moment savoring the oily warmth spreading into his belly, until finally the saltiness registered. Not good. The alcohol, the sweat drenching his clothes, his scratchy throat, tongue parched. Now his lips were puckering from the sodium. Category 5 dehydration.
Thorn scooted back to the narrow shaft in the floor and began to dig, combing back the layer of marl and granulated limestone, pebbles and the pulverized remains of ancient seashells.
When he’d made a bowl around the mouth of the cleft, he snaked his arm into the hole again, pressing his armpit hard against the depression. Maybe he’d gained an inch, but it was only enough to tickle his fingertips across the cool surface.
He wriggled his arm free and sat up, sucked the dew off his fingers.
He tried to focus, tried to reduce this to simple geometry. Water so close. Tantalizingly near. Just a few inches beyond arm’s length. There was a way to get at it. There had to be. Before he tried to scale those sheer walls, he had to have water. He had to. Take it one step at a time. Water, then escape.
Then he heard the sound. Thinking at first it was the wild skid and thud of his heart echoing in his ears. But as it rose in volume he recognized the familiar racket, the whump-whump-whump of a helicopter’s rotor blades.
He peered up at the slits of sunlight showing through the planks above him and caught a flash of the chopper’s passing. He had a spike of hope, then a slow deflation.
No one was coming for him. No one was even looking. He’d left a note for the only ones who might track him down. Written it word for word as dictated. Idiot drunk. He’d not even had the cunning to intentionally misspell a word, or leave some other signal the note was a lie.
“I just need some time alone to think.”
Well, by God, he was going to have that. A whole lot of that.
He listened to the chopper fade. He pressed his back against the pitted walls and listened until it was gone and the only noise that remained was the cawing of a gang of crows who in their dim-witted arrogance must have believed they’d scared the giant bird away.
ELEVEN
* * *
INSIDE THE COQUINA RANCH BUSINESS offices, Claire Hammond heard the roar of another helicopter. That made three. Two had arrived earlier from TV stations in Miami, then another came, black and bulky like a military gunship. While she was outside taking a break between interrogations, she’d watched the big chopper tip from side to side, warning the news guys off.
Even the Hammonds’ air space was no longer their own.
Her third grilling was about to begin. This time the tape recorder was held by a woman.
She was younger than her male counterparts, hair pulled back in a tight ponytail, white polo shirt. Eyes that gave nothing away. Broad forehead, pointy chin, a triangular face. She introduced herself. Anne Donaldson. FDLE. Stiff manner, strictly professional, disinterested. She asked Claire to sit, asked her if she wanted a lawyer, which she declined, then asked her to begin at the beginning, go through it, leave nothing out. Same as the others had.
She retold the story. Still numb, out of body, suspended up there with the helicopters looking down from a great height at the whirlwind she’d created. Claire Hammond, killer. Claire Hammond, who failed to act in time. Who caused the death of a man she revered and another who was her friend.
Okay, so she’d been in the barn. She’d heard the bugs go quiet. She went outside and stared at the lodge. It seemed strangely still. She walked over. But before she went inside, she decided she was spooked over nothing and started back to the barn. That’s when she bumped into something on the path and stooped down to investigate. It was a dead man. An FDLE agent she’d met earlier in the day.
She panicked briefly, got control of herself, ran back to the barn, grabbed her shotgun, and ran back to the lodge.
When she barged inside she saw Gustavo Pinto holding a pistol. Earl and Browning were standing in front of the couch. Antwan Shelton and Governor Sanchez behind it. Gustavo’s gun was pointed at the floor.
Claire ordered him to drop the pistol. But he didn’t. Gustavo pled for forgiveness from Earl Hammond.
Browning yelled for her to shoot.
She hesitated until Gustavo raised the pistol, then she fired. But she was a second late. One horrendous second.
In the middle of Claire’s account, someone entered the room. She didn’t look up. People had been coming and going all day.
As she finished the story her eyes burned again. But this time she managed to keep them from fogging over. No tears, no choking up, simply kept staring down at the scarred pine table before her.
Like everything else at the ranch, that table had a history. A table where early in the last century greenbacks were slipped into white business envelopes and handed out to a line of workers on Friday afternoon. The same table where those workers and their wives and children sat in their Sunday finest to eat dinner in the Coquina Ranch canteen. Where the U.S. mail was once sorted for the hundred numbered boxes in the ranch’s post office, which served the citizens of that part of the county. Where vaccinations had been administered during an outbreak of influenza. Where the punch bowl had been set up, and platters of food laid out for rollicking square dances held outside in the big corral. Earl Hammond told her the stories of that table, that room and building that had seen so many incarnations over the years and was now used for clerical work, bookkeeping, the mundane jobs of ranch operations.
After a few seconds of silence, as Claire continued to gaze down at that wood with her eyes muddy, Anne Donaldson leaned forward into Claire’s line of sight, the woman’s chin almost touching the table.
“The bugs got quiet?” she said. “Is that some kind of country thing?”
“Knock it off, Donaldson.”
Claire rubbed her eyes and looked up. Frisco was leaning against the wall. In jeans and a gray Miami Police T-shirt, arms crossed over his chest.
“Listen to me, Sergeant Hammond. At the governor’s request, as a courtesy to your grieving family, I’ve agreed to allow you to sit in. I understand you’re a police officer, a street cop. I respect that. But my function here is a little different from what you’re used to. So I’m making this request once, and once only, keep quiet. That clear? Or you’re out.”
“Don’t mock the woman. If she heard the bugs get quiet, the bugs got quiet.”
Donaldson shook her head and turned back to Claire.
“So after the bugs got quiet, and after you barged into the lodge with your shotgun, what was everyone doing? Were they arguing? Angry?”
“Only what I said. Gustavo pleading for forgiveness and Browning yelling at me to shoot.”
“What’d he say, your husband? His exact words, you remember?”
“ ‘Shoot the fucking bastard.’ I remember that. ‘For your family.’ He said that, too. It seemed strange.”
“ ‘For your family’?”
She nodded.
“And Gustavo, his words?”
“ ‘God forgive me.’ ”
“That’s all? ‘God forgive me’?”
“That’s all I remember.”
“Okay, so let’s run the tape back a little. You’re running across the parking lot, heading toward the house. On that leg, was there anything unusual? In the yard, the parking lot, anything out of place? Caught your attention.”
“In the parking lot, there was Gustavo’s pickup truck and the governor’s SUV. And the Faust brothers’ Prius.”
“Faust brothers?”
She looked across at Frisco. He rolled his eyes upward and stared at the beadboard ceiling, staying out of it.
“They live in the hunting lodge inside the game preserve. They’re friends of Browning. They take the hunting parties out on shoots. Run errands.”
“Jamokes,” Frisco said.
Donaldson cut a look at him, then said, “So these big-game safari hunters, where are they when you’re running into the lodge?”
“I don’t know.”
&nb
sp; Donaldson thumbed through her notebook, doing it slowly, page by page. No hurry, forehead wrinkled, a hokey show of consternation.
“You’re sure you saw that car? A Prius.”
“Camouflage paint job. Yes, I saw it.”
“You’re not confusing last night with some other night? I mean, these two guys, they work here, so they must come and go, you could have it mixed up.”
“Their car was there.”
Donaldson glanced back at Frisco, gave him a look Claire couldn’t see, but it appeared she might be daring Frisco to speak again so she could toss him from the room. Then she turned back to Claire and was neutral.
“So we’re back inside the lodge. Anything out of the ordinary there? Beside the man with the gun.”
“No.”
“Nothing? No furniture overturned? No sign of struggle, no broken glass, nothing?”
“There was some kind of map.”
“What map?”
“Like a survey map. It was rolled open on the table. It had red dots on it.”
“You mention this map to the other investigators? FBI, Homeland Security.”
“I don’t know. I think so, but maybe not.”
“Red dots on a map. Okay. You ever see this map before?”
“No.”
Frisco had shut his eyes, and his head was lowered.
“This Gustavo Pinto,” Donaldson said without a beat. “You friendly with this fellow? Have a special relationship?”
“I liked him. He was a good man. Courteous, polite in an old-world way.”
“Is that why you hesitated, didn’t shoot the second you saw your husband and the others in danger?”
“That’s out of line, Donaldson.”
“I’m not telling you again, Hammond. Zip it, or you’re gone.”
Anne Donaldson flattened her lips into a strained smile.
“You were saying?”
“I didn’t shoot because Gustavo wasn’t aiming the gun at anyone. It was pointed at the floor.”
“Help me understand this, Claire. You’ve just found a dead man, an officer of the law who you knew was on duty to protect the safety of the governor of the state of Florida. So you realized a murder had been committed, and that very likely other lives were in danger, but despite that, you come in the house, find this gentleman holding a gun, and what? You thought it’s some kind of parlor game?”
Claire shook her head. Nothing she could say.
“You ever see that pistol before, the one Pinto used? You recognize it?”
“No.”
“It was a Sig Sauer Mosquito. Twenty-two caliber. A plinker. Maybe you saw that particular pistol around the ranch? Maybe it belonged to somebody else. Ever hear anyone mention seeing or owning such a weapon?”
“No,” she said.
“Anything happen around here, anything of note, about a week ago?”
“A week ago?”
“The twentieth, or it could be the nineteenth, a day or two either way.”
“What’re you talking about?”
“That’s the day that pistol was picked up at the Ace Gunshop in Miami. Purchased three days before that. Both the weapon and silencer bought and paid for by Gustavo Pinto, registered in his name. I’m wondering if something happened around here that might have precipitated that purchase.”
“Look, I never saw the pistol before. I didn’t know Gustavo owned a pistol. And I still don’t believe it.”
“Why don’t you believe it?”
“Gustavo was very gentle, very kind and sweet. Not a violent man.”
“Apparently you misread him,” Donaldson said. “Last night he murdered two people. Killed a colleague of mine, then walked into the main house and put two slugs in the chest of Earl Hammond from five feet away in front of four eyewitnesses.”
Claire shook her head, a bitter taste rising into her mouth.
“That gun’s all wrong,” Frisco said.
Donaldson tilted her eyes up as if beseeching the heavens for patience.
“Wrong?”
“He bought the Mosquito with a silencer. Gunshop in Miami.”
“That’s what I said.”
“The gun you recovered at the crime scene had a functioning silencer?”
“That’s right.”
“Factory or custom?”
She sighed, got her notes, paged through them.
“Factory-made, serial number removed.”
“Well, there you go.”
“Goddammit, Hammond, spit it out.”
“Only kind of silencer he could have bought at the gun shop would be a fake.”
“Fake?” Claire said.
“Fake silencer is for the jerkoff who wants to look like a gangster. It doesn’t do anything, it’s just for show. To get a factory-made suppressor, the real deal, as I’m sure Ms. Donaldson knows, you have to fill out a mound of paperwork. It has to go to ATF for approval, it can take three months to work its way through. Or you find one on the black market. You don’t go into a gun shop and get one with a three-day wait.”
“I’m aware of that,” Donaldson said.
“So like I said, the gun’s all wrong. Serial number is removed from the silencer but not the handgun. Why’s he spend the money to buy a fake silencer if he’s got a real one lined up?”
Claire stared down at the table.
“You’re really pushing it, Sergeant.”
“Next thing you got to ask yourself, out in the middle of nowhere, place like Coquina Ranch, why bother with a silencer at all? If you want to kill Earl, you walk up, take out the governor’s bodyguard, two seconds later you’re in the lodge. Nobody inside has time to react to the gunshots. You walk in, pop the old man, walk back out. Why use a suppressor?”
“Why don’t you just go ahead and tell us, Sergeant Hammond?”
“It’s got to be about Claire, keeping her from hearing. The shooter didn’t want her getting in the middle of it.”
“But she heard something anyway.”
“No, she heard what wasn’t there. She heard the absence of noise. The bugs went silent. Whoever bought that gun didn’t factor in that possibility.”
“And that means what?”
“Tells me somebody didn’t know her too well. Didn’t realize how perceptive she is. What a country girl she’s become. Gustavo would’ve known that. Clap your hands out in the country at night, everything gets quiet for a few seconds.”
Donaldson dusted the edge of the table with a couple of irritable swipes.
“There’s four witnesses to this killing,” she said. “But you, Sergeant, keep straining to come up with far-fetched, pathetically improbable scenarios that say Gustavo didn’t do it. Give it up, Hammond, stop wasting my time.”
“The gun’s funky, that’s all I’m saying.”
TWELVE
* * *
“OKAY, ALL RIGHT, CLAIRE.” ANNE Donaldson waved her hand as if clearing the air of smoke. “Let’s go back to Gustavo and his possible motive. Maybe he was pissed off about something. You get a whiff of that? Had a grudge. Unhappy with his pay, some new work assignment, mistreatment of one kind or another. Maybe marital problems, an affair, anything of that nature. Possibly something was brewing for a while and just boiled over.”
“Nothing like that,” Claire said. “Gustavo was a gentleman. He was a second-generation employee, his father held the same job. He was family. It doesn’t make sense.”
“Would you have known if one of the workers was having a problem with Earl Hammond? Would that be something you’d automatically be aware of?”
“Of course. Browning would have told me if there was an issue.”
“You and your husband are open about everything?”
“What does that mean?”
“Business matters. Daily events on the ranch. You and him share the gossip, the goings-on?”
“I believe we do.”
“You’re not sure?”
“I would’ve known if something was wron
g with Gustavo.”
“But you didn’t know that Gustavo had been fired. That he’d been given a week’s notice to clear out of his house.”
“Gustavo wasn’t fired.”
“Is that your statement? Gustavo hadn’t been given a week’s notice to clear out of his house and leave? You heard nothing about any of that?”
“It’s not true.”
“You’re sure?”
“Fired over what?”
“Cost cutting. Could that be it? Trimming overhead?”
“Who told you that? Browning?”
Anne Donaldson sat for a moment without speaking. She tapped the edge of the tape recorder with a long fingernail. Tapped it several times.
“It’s not true. I would’ve known. Somebody would’ve told me. He’s the ranch foreman, for Christ’s sake. He grew up on Coquina Ranch.”
“Maybe you’re not as aware of the internal operations of this ranch as you think you are. Maybe not everyone confides in you. Is that possible?”
She crooked a finger and looked at it with interest.
Claire sighed. Yes, it was possible. In the last couple years there’d been a growing loss of intimacy between Browning and her. In the bedroom, at the dinner table, in every phase of their life together. More than once lately he hadn’t bothered to include her in a major decision. The safari enterprise was one of those. He’d presented it to her as a fait accompli, mentioning it one day in passing. She’d been shocked, angry, hurt. And it worried her, too. Browning seemed to be confiding more in his buddy Antwan than his own wife.
“I just remembered something.” Claire glanced at Frisco. He was staring down at the plank floor, hiding his eyes as if trying not to coach her, or perhaps sorting out something he’d heard in her statement.
In her two previous interviews she’d forgotten to mention her conversation with Earl in the barn. She hadn’t considered it relevant, but after hearing the claim that Gustavo had been fired, she was no longer so sure.
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