by PJ Parrish
Away from the headlights, everything was fuzzy and black, but he pushed forward, catching a glimpse of a body lying in the dirt. A small part of his brain registered it as not Swann but Kavanagh. But even that thought vanished when he caught sight of a red tail of hair slipping through an open gate—only one of many in the maze, he knew. She’d have to zigzag through them. He could vault over the last fence and catch her in the open field beyond.
But the last rail was rotted, splintering under his weight and sending him again into the mud. He struggled to his feet, trying to catch his breath as his eyes scoured the darkness. The moon gave him a fleeting flash of her jacket far ahead.
He threw off the bulky slicker and sprinted forward, praying that the ground stayed level and the moon stayed bright. His mind was racing with questions. Was Swann dead? Did Sam have his rifle? Was she the only killer? Was she the only one out here? And where was she running to?
Suddenly, she was gone again, swallowed up by the looming black shadows. He slowed, then stopped and stared.
Trees. Lots of them.
He glanced over his shoulder, then back to the woods, every second he stood here ticking off in his head as wasted time.
Go. Go after her.
He leveled his Glock and walked into the woods, up a sloped and rocky path. The moonlight vanished. The air smelled thick, green, and dirty. The trees felt close, tightening around him like the press of an anxious crowd.
Take a breath.
He made his way up the path, turning from left to right and back again. The sounds were soft, floating on the air like broken leaves. It was hard to tell which direction they were coming from. The rustle of a branch. Was it behind him or ahead? The plink of raindrops. Close or far away?
Crack!
Something snapped across his back, ripping his shirt and stinging his skin. He ducked and spun, not sure where to point his gun, not sure what the hell had hit him.
Crack!
His sleeve was slashed, his skin on fire.
Crack!
The whip ripped across his knuckles, tearing the gun from his hand. He heard it hit the blanket of leaves, but he couldn’t see it.
Crack! Crack!
His hands were soaked in blood.
Crack!
“Stop it!” he screamed.
Crack. Crack. Crack. The whip swirled through the darkness like a lasso, snapping thin branches and splattering up dirt like the kick of a bullet. There was nowhere to go, nothing to hide behind, and he couldn’t run. He couldn’t leave his gun for her to find.
Crack!
A snap across his legs.
Crack!
The tail of the whip sliced into his face like a hot wire. Stunned, he cried out and dropped to his knees, teeth gritted, tears blurring his eyes. The gun… find the gun.
He threw a hand into the leaves.
Crack!
His fingers touched steel, and he came up in a spin, searching for that sliver of khaki in the tall, dizzying shadows of black and brown. For a second, it was still, the only sound the rush of his own breath.
Then the milky oval of her face took shape. A white mask with scorched black eyes.
His mind tripped with three thoughts.
Shoot to kill.
Shoot to wound.
Shoot to kill.
He aimed for her heart and fired.
Chapter Forty
The dawn sky was lilac and dove-gray. A fog hovered low to the ground, making the live oaks look like they were floating in the air.
The drone of the generator suddenly quit, and for a moment it was silent. Then came the morning song of the birds.
Louis looked over at the deputies who were starting to dismantle the floodlights. Hours ago, the cattle pen had been lit up like a garish arena. Now it had returned to its blur of bleached wood and weeds.
From his position sitting in the passenger seat of the open police cruiser, Louis watched the processing of the scene. They would go on all day, this careful army of deputies, detectives, and technicians, even though the bodies had been taken away hours ago.
Louis had watched as the two black body bags were loaded into the county van. He had been the one to identify them. Tink Lyons, found out by the Bronco. And Samantha Norris, lying under the giant oak in Devil’s Garden.
Byrne Kavanagh had been taken out in an ambulance, his throat slashed, half his blood gone from his body, but still alive.
And Swann…
Louis hadn’t even seen him as he raced through the dark after Sam. It was only as he walked back, holding his ripped cheek, that he saw Aubry cradling Swann in the high weeds. Swann’s shoulder had been slashed, and he had a bullet in his thigh. But by the time the sheriff’s deputies arrived, Swann was already trying to talk his way out of going to the hospital.
“Coffee?”
Louis turned. A tall man in slacks, dress shirt, and jacket was standing there holding a Styrofoam cup. There was a gold badge hanging from his breast pocket. His name tag above it read MAJOR GENE CRYER.
“Thanks, Major,” Louis said, taking the coffee.
Cryer looked out over the pen and the trees. “Lot of land,” he said.
“Four thousand acres,” Louis said.
Louis looked over to where Burke Aubry stood with three deputies. He had a map of the ranch open on the hood of the cruiser and was helping direct the search.
They had questioned Swann, Aubry, and Louis. Cryer himself had grilled Louis for more than an hour.
They had taken the rifle and Louis’s Glock; it was routine in any investigation. But after Louis had told them what had happened and that he hadn’t shot Tink Lyons, they had begun a search for a second gun. They were also looking for other victims. No one, not even Louis, could be sure there weren’t more.
“I’ve had some time to go over everything,” Cryer said. “And right now, I am inclined to believe you’re telling the truth.”
“What about Carolyn Osborn?” Louis asked.
“We’ll check her out.” He paused. “She’s a senator, you know.”
“Yeah, I know.”
“What makes you think she had anything to do with this?”
Louis was quiet for a moment. “I just know.”
“Well, senators are printed for security clearance. So, if she was in the Bronco, we’ll find out.”
The crunch of gravel drew Louis’s eye to the road. A tan sedan pulled between the cruisers and stopped. A bulky man got out and looked around.
“Christ,” Louis muttered.
Barberry spotted him and came toward the cruiser, his badge on its chain bouncing on his belly.
“Hey, Major,” Barberry said. He didn’t even give Louis a glance.
“Where the hell have you been?” Cryer said.
Barberry finally looked at Louis and ran a quick hand through his messy hair. “I was home in bed all night,” he said. “Got a damn stomach thing going on.”
Louis could smell the medicine stink of Listerine from where he sat.
“Why didn’t you respond when Kincaid called you last night?”
Barberry gave a shrug. “Nobody called me.”
“I checked the logs, Ron. You were paged four times. You never answered.”
Barberry looked at Louis. “Look, I don’t know what this asshole’s been telling you, Major, but I’ve been all over this case from day one. You can check my reports.”
Cryer stared down at Barberry, then turned away, his jaw grinding. “Get out of here,” he said.
“What?”
Cryer looked at Barberry. “Just get out of here.”
Barberry shot Louis a final glare and stomped off. Louis watched the tan sedan back out and disappear down the gravel road.
Cryer tossed out the last of his coffee in disgust. “I’ve been looking for a reason to unload that guy. Maybe I can get him demoted to warrants.”
“Well, he looks good in puke green.”
Cryer managed a smile. “You’re from Fort Myers,
right?”
Louis nodded.
“Somebody said you’re hoping to go home soon.”
Louis nodded again. He was dog-tired, and the wound on his cheek hurt like hell, even with the antiseptic and butterfly bandage.
“I’ll try to move your Glock through the pipeline and get it back to you in a couple days,” Cryer said.
“Thanks. I appreciate that.”
Cryer was surveying the scene, and when his eyes got to the brown spot in the pen’s sand where Byrne Kavanagh had been slashed, he let out a breath. Then he shook his head and walked over to one of his deputies.
Louis rose slowly from the cruiser. He was stiff, his muscles still releasing their adrenaline high. Beneath his bloody shirt, his skin hurt, but he couldn’t tell exactly where, so it felt like a million bee stings.
He shivered, looking around. There was no reason for him to stay here anymore. He saw Aubry coming toward him. He had taken off his denim jacket and held it out to Louis.
“Better put this on, son.”
Louis didn’t object. The jacket smelled like horses and was stained with Swann’s blood, but it was warm.
“That young fella gonna be okay?”
“Andrew’s going to be fine.”
Aubry gave a nod as he looked back at the cattle pen. Louis realized he was staring at something on the fence. It was the small sign that said archer preserve. He suspected Aubry was thinking about how he was going to tell Libby Archer what had happened here.
When Aubry turned back, Louis was surprised to see tears in his eyes. “I don’t have any way to thank you,” Aubry said.
“For what?”
“The truth.”
Louis just nodded.
“Come on, I’ll drive you back, and you can pick up your friend’s fancy little car.” They were halfway to the Jeep when Aubry paused. “I almost forgot. What about that kitten back in my bathroom?”
Louis closed his eyes. He’d forgotten about the damn cat. He couldn’t take it home.
“How about I keep the little fella?” Aubry said.
Louis smiled. “You’re a lifesaver, Mr. Aubry.”
Chapter Forty-one
Byrne Kavanagh was going to live. He would have a hell of a scar across his throat, and it would be months before he could talk, and even then, the doctors said his voice would likely sound as if his throat were lined with sandpaper.
Louis stepped from the elevator on the fourth floor of the Palm Beach County Hospital and walked down the hall toward Room 456. Louis had been here every day for the last three days, but so far, Kavanagh had been too weak or too drugged to make any kind of statement.
Louis hoped things would be different this afternoon. The extra days spent sitting around Reggie’s house waiting to wrap things up felt long and unproductive, despite the trickle of information that was still coming in.
The deputies had found four sets of footprints near the Bronco: Sam’s, made by the oversized boots she was wearing, which proved to be custom-made for her husband before his stroke and identical to the pair found in Reggie’s home.
Tink Lyons’s, made by her beaded slippers.
Byrne Kavanagh’s, made by brand-new loafers.
And a fourth set that led from the Bronco south toward the cattle pen, then veered straight west toward the asphalt road, where they simply stopped. They were made by a woman’s dress boot, size eight. Louis believed, without question, that it was the wearer of those boots who took the gun, fleeing the scene after Tink was killed. How she got back to Palm Beach was still a mystery.
Although she wasn’t Louis’s prime suspect, they had to check out Bianca Lee. It took the sheriff’s office only an hour to find out that she had hung a sign on her shop door that said CLOSED FOR THE SEASON and was boarding a plane to Madrid at almost the exact moment Louis and Aubry were racing toward the cattle pen. The unidentified boot prints could not be hers.
Which left Carolyn Osborn.
They had enough evidence to question her: her fingerprints in Sam’s Bronco and the bullet removed from Tink’s head, which turned out to be a German 9mm, made for a Luger or a P38, circa World War II. The deputies never found the gun, but everyone knew that Nazi militaria was the cornerstone of Tucker Osborn’s collection.
But Major Cryer was a cautious man, and, like Louis, he knew Carolyn Osborn would claim that as a friend of Sam’s, her prints had been left in her truck at another time. As for the German handgun, it had probably been dropped in a drainage canal by now, its brackets in Tucker Osborn’s gun cabinet mysteriously empty.
Which is why Cryer wanted to hear what Kavanagh had to say before he knocked on a senator’s door and started talking murder.
Kavanagh was the only person who could place Carolyn Osborn out at the cattle pen that night, making her as guilty as Sam of kidnapping, torture, the murder of Tink Lyons, and the attempted murder of Kavanagh. And if Louis could tie Carolyn to Kavanagh’s attack and the Orchid Society, he could link her to Mark Durand.
And Durand’s murder—premeditated and involving torture and decapitation—made the senator eligible for the death penalty.
Louis stopped at the door to Kavanagh’s room. There was a deputy seated outside, leafing through a magazine. Normally, there would be no reason to assign a cop to guard a victim, but Cryer’s cautiousness didn’t stop at the idea of ruining a political career without due cause. He reluctantly yielded to Louis’s insistence that not all of the killers in this case were dead and assigned the guard until Kavanagh was released.
The deputy outside Kavanagh’s room got up from his chair as Louis approached.
“Has Major Cryer been here?” Louis asked.
The deputy shook his head. “Not today. He had a long night and asked me to call him only if the guy was awake and talking.”
“Nothing yet?”
“No, sir. But if he says anything, let me know, okay?”
Louis nodded. “Will do.”
Kavanagh was awake, the bed elevated. His face was still bruised from Dickie Lyons’s assault, but it was his body that was jarring to see. He was bare to the chest, his skin marked with a web of cuts. An air tube protruded from the turtleneck of bandages that wrapped his throat.
Louis stepped to the side of the bed.
Kavanagh’s eyes slid to him, teary with pain.
“My name is Kincaid,” Louis said. “I’m an investigator. You up to talking to me?”
Kavanagh motioned weakly toward a small dry-erase board and a marker on the night table. Louis gave them to Kavanagh.
With everything the guy had been through, Louis didn’t want to be insensitive. The best thing to do was to keep his questions pointed so Kavanagh could supply one- and two-word answers.
“Who did this to you?” Louis asked.
Kavanagh wrote something and angled the board so Louis could read it.
DONT KNOW
“I’m sorry?” Louis said. “What do you mean you don’t know?”
Kavanagh underlined his answer. DONT KNOW
“Okay,” he said. “Maybe this will help. You were found out on a ranch near Clewiston with your throat cut. Do you know how you got there?”
NO
Louis stared at the board, baffled. He had seen a lot of victims in his life, some so traumatized it took them weeks to put together a cohesive story. But they were usually visibly shaky and barely able to begin reliving the event. Kavanagh looked tired but in control. In fact, he seemed mildly annoyed.
But maybe his reluctance to talk was something else. He was only twenty-three, paid to provide sex to rich older women. Maybe he felt humiliated that he had been overpowered and almost killed by those same women.
“Look, Kavanagh,” Louis said. “You have nothing to be embarrassed about. And if someone has a gun on you, you do what you’re told. I understand that. So will everyone else.”
NOT EMBAR
“Then tell me who took you to the pen and attacked you,” Louis said.
Kavanag
h erased the board with his hand and wrote in hard slashes.
DONT KNOW
Louis glanced at the door, wondering if he should find a doctor and ask if Kavanagh had suffered some form of amnesia. Then he decided against it, not wanting some nurse to force him to leave. He’d find out himself what this kid remembered.
“Do you know who and where you are?” Louis asked.
BYRNE. FUCKIN HOSPITAL
There was nothing wrong with Kavanagh that a little pressure wouldn’t fix. He’d start with something Kavanagh couldn’t pretend not to remember.
“We know you were at Tink Lyons’s house the night before you were taken to the pen. Do you remember getting beat up by her husband?”
NO
“Do you know why you were at her house?”
Kavanagh stabbed at his board to reiterate his answer.
“Do you even know Tink Lyons?”
NO
“Do you have any idea how you were injured?”
NO
What the hell was going on here? Was it possible Kavanagh’s brain had shut completely down? Had the women given him a powerful drug that blocked his memory? Is that how they had subdued him?
But if that was what had happened and he really didn’t remember anything, why wasn’t he asking Louis questions? What kind of person wouldn’t want to know?
“Okay, Kavanagh,” Louis said. “I’ll leave you alone, but you’re going to be getting visits from lots of other people. Cops. You need to think about telling them the truth.”
Kavanagh stared at his board.
Louis turned to leave, then caught a glimpse of something on the windowsill, a potted flower. It wasn’t red; it was white. But it was definitely an orchid. He went to the window. No card or label, nothing to tell him what shop it had come from or who had sent it. He looked back at Kavanagh.
“Who brought this orchid to you?” Louis asked.
DONT KNOW
“Did Senator Osborn come to see you this morning?”
WHO THAT
“Did anyone come to see you? A guy named Greg, maybe?”