She rolled onto her knees, struggling to breathe. She saw where the Glock lay a few feet away on the shoulder, knew she’d never reach it.
“I’m a sheriff’s deputy,” she said.
“I know.”
She looked up at him. Got one foot under her, then another. She rose shakily, her back to the Range Rover, breathing heavy. If he was going to shoot her, he’d have to do it like this, standing. Not on her knees.
The muzzle of the gun followed her up, steadied, maybe three feet from her forehead. Gloved finger on the trigger.
Danny.
“I don’t have the money,” she said. Her chest rose and fell.
“I know.”
“I don’t know anything about it.”
“Doesn’t matter now.”
She closed her eyes, wondered if she’d hear the shot.
“I have a little boy,” she said.
“I know.”
She looked at him then, met his eyes.
He lowered the gun.
As she watched, he stepped back, picked up her Glock, and tossed it into the woods. He looked at her for a moment, then turned and walked away into the fog.
She knelt by DeWayne, trying not to look at what was left of his face. Felt beneath him until her fingers touched metal. With a heave, she rolled him off the chromed automatic, picked it up, slick with his blood. She worked the slide to make sure a round was chambered, moved fast to the front of the Range Rover. The man was only a silhouette in the fog now, walking toward his car. She aimed.
“Stop right there!”
He did.
“Turn around slow and drop your weapon.”
He didn’t move.
“You going to shoot me in the back?” he said.
The gun was unsteady in her hands. She tightened her grip, set the front sight on him. “Just put your weapon down.”
After a moment, he said, “I didn’t think so,” and walked on, the fog closing in around him.
She watched him go, her finger slackening on the trigger.
Whoever he is, he just saved your life.
She heard a car door shut, the hiss of tires. Watched the glow of the taillights fade.
She listened until she couldn’t hear anything else, then lowered the gun. She stood alone in the fog and silence.
Morgan kept it to thirty-five on the drive back to the motel, watching the rearview, the still-warm Beretta on his lap.
He doubted she’d gotten a good look at the car or plates. DeWayne had used his name, but it wouldn’t do her much good. One more day here and he was gone.
He’d get the money from Flynn, do whatever it took to make that happen. But he couldn’t go back to Newark now. He’d call Cassandra from someplace safe, have her and the boy meet him. He’d have to find a way to get to the bank, empty his safe deposit. Then head west maybe, keep driving.
He thought about the woman deputy. Remembered her carrying her little boy in the park, hitched up on her shoulders. Tonight she’d gone head-to-head with DeWayne rather than run and hide in the fog. Had stood and looked Morgan in the eye as he held the Beretta on her, his finger on the trigger. He’d seen the fear there, but something else beyond it. Something that was stronger.
The fog was starting to break up, the road clearing in his headlights. He turned the stereo back on, pushed the tape in. Sam Cooke wishing someone would come and ease his troublin’ mind.
One more day and gone.
TWENTY-FIVE
Four A.M., and the Sheriff’s Office was abuzz. Off-duty deputies had shown up as the news got out. Sara sat slumped in the chair facing the sheriff’s desk, her right ear still echoing with the shot DeWayne had fired. She ached all over, and the adrenaline aftershock was starting to fade, a stonelike fatigue taking its place.
She could see the sheriff and Sam Elwood talking by the dispatcher’s desk, Sam with his hands on his hips. He turned, met her eyes.
She stretched her legs, rubbed her calf where DeWayne had kicked her. Outside, she could see thin fog drifting past the floodlights, stars starting to appear in the sky.
The sheriff came back in carrying a manila folder and a bottle of water. He cracked the cap, handed it to her.
“Thanks.”
He closed the door and settled behind his desk. “How do you feel?”
“Tired,” she said.
“I can imagine.”
“I just want to see Danny.”
“You will. I talked to Andy Ryan a few minutes ago. Everything’s fine. I sent a deputy out there as well.”
She took a long drink of water.
He opened the folder, took out a black-and-white photo on printer paper, and set it in front of her.
“New Jersey State Police sent that down. Look familiar?”
She pulled the photo closer. It was the man DeWayne had called Morgan.
“That’s him,” she said. “He’s younger here, though. Man I saw was in his fifties, sixties maybe. Like he’d been around.”
“He has. That photo’s a few years old. Name’s Nathaniel Morgan. Fifty-seven, kind of old for this sort of thing. He has a jacket going back to the sixties—assault, attempted murder, manslaughter. Did seven years on the last one, 1980 to ’87.”
“Who were the other two?”
He read from the file.
“Dante and DeWayne Coleman. Brothers. Both have substantial sheets. DeWayne, the big one, just got out of state prison two months ago, for aggravated assault. A couple of princes, those two.”
“Have you found Billy?”
He sat back. “Sam just came back from his place. He’s gone, of course. I left Minos McCarthy and Ed Strunk out there in a cruiser, see if he comes back. I’m doubting he will. Looks like he packed up, hit the road. Any idea where he might have gone?”
She shook her head. “I tried his cell a half-dozen times,” she said. “It’s turned off. I think he’s got a brother in Ocala—”
“We know. I put in a call to the Marion County SO up there. They’re out at the house now. No sign of him, and the brother says he hasn’t seen or heard from him in weeks. No, I’m thinking it’s somewhere nearby, somewhere he thinks is safe. A fishing camp or a hunting cabin or something.”
“If he has one, he never told me.”
“On the other hand, if all this is true, he can go a long way on three hundred and fifty thousand dollars.”
All of it was catching up with her now, hearing someone else speak it. The signs she should have seen. The things that were in front of her all along she never put together, didn’t want to put together.
Now here you are. What good did you do after all?
“We put a BOLO out on the truck,” he said. “Unless he’s got another vehicle stashed somewhere, we’ll find him soon. My guess is he’s holed up somewhere close, especially if he’s carrying that money around.”
“Maybe he isn’t. Maybe Lee-Anne has it.”
“If she did, someone took it from her.”
“What do you mean?”
“Call came in about an hour ago. FHP found her car abandoned down in Hendry County. Gone off the road, all busted up. Blood on the seat.”
“And?”
“They alerted the Sheriff’s Office down there. Tracks show there were a couple other cars at the scene. They’re trying to chase it down. She had suitcases in the trunk, but someone had been through them. From the amount of blood, the condition of the car, unlikely she walked away.”
“Someone took her.”
“Looks like. And not to a hospital. This thing’s sprawling, Sara, and bad. FDLE’s out at your scene. Tampa FBI’s been notified as well. This whole thing gets taken away from us in twenty-four hours, I’m guessing. Unless we find Billy first.”
“Can you GPS his phone?”
“No luck so far. Either he shut it down or figured out how to deactivate the tracking applet. If he uses it again, we might get lucky. Until then . . .”
He tapped an unsharpened pencil on the desk.
“Elwood’s got your service weapon,” he said. “He’ll give it to you before you leave. You’ll need to clean it good, though. Some dirt in the barrel and all.”
He touched his left cheek. “You might want to do something about that too.”
She raised a hand to her face, felt the stickiness there. He took a tissue from the box next to his terminal, handed it over. She folded it, dabbed it with water from the bottle, wiped her cheek. It came away red.
“You handled yourself well out there,” he said.
“How’s that?” She dabbed water, wiped again. More blood. “I had my service weapon taken away from me. Twice.”
“You came back in one piece. That’s the main thing.”
“I guess.”
“Maybe this Morgan did you a favor, taking those two out like that. Kept you from having to make that choice. It’s not an easy thing, shooting a man. It can be tough to live with. You can give it all the context and justification you want, but it still goes against human nature. I haven’t fired a shot in anger since the war, and that’s the way I want to keep it.”
She looked at the bloody tissue.
“That’s one of the things I can’t get my head around,” he said. “Billy shooting that boy that way. What makes a good man—a good deputy—do something like that?”
“Money.”
“Did he really think he was going to get away with it? That much money? That someone wasn’t going to come looking for it?”
“I don’t know. Maybe he was tired of the way things were. Maybe he saw this as his chance.”
“His chance to get killed.”
“Maybe he thought he could handle it, handle whatever came after, too.”
He tapped the pencil.
“Would have thought he was smarter than that. But money can do that to a person, I guess. Wake up one day, think they deserve something they haven’t earned. Decide to go out and take it. But it never works out. They can never hold on to it.”
“I wouldn’t know,” she said.
“Money. People think it’ll cure all their troubles. Then they find out the way things really work.”
“How’s that?”
“Forget about money,” he said. “Pain’s the only currency. And everybody pays their way.”
• • •
She pulled up the driveway to JoBeth’s house. A cruiser was parked in the sideyard, Clay Huff at the wheel, drinking takeout coffee. He nodded at her as she got out, went up the steps. The sky to the east was lightening.
She knocked softly, and Andy Ryan opened the door. He was dressed, a clip-on holster on his belt, a .38 snugged there.
“Come on in, Sara. Are you okay?”
“I’m fine. How’s Danny?”
“Still sleeping. He got up once during the night, asked for you, but that’s it.”
“He know about any of this?”
“No.”
“Good.”
He shut the door behind her.
“I’ll make up my bed for you,” he said. “I’m up for the day anyway, already had my first cup of coffee.”
“That’s okay. I don’t want to put you to any trouble.”
“No trouble at all.”
“I want to check on Danny first.”
“Go on.”
She went down the hall to the extra bedroom, the door ajar, a night-light on. She opened the door wider, saw him there, sleeping on his side, hugging the pillow against him, breathing softly. Fragile.
It was a teenager’s bed, had belonged to JoBeth’s brother before her parents divorced and he’d gone to live with his mother in Gainesville. Danny seemed lost in it.
Someday, sooner than you expect, he’ll be a teenager himself, with a life beyond the hospital and doctors and drugs. Then an adult, with, please God, all this sickness just a bad memory. Someday he’ll leave your house, make his own life. He’ll be a man, and you’ll be old and gray. And alone.
She shut the door quietly behind her, sat on a chair, and pulled off her mud-spattered sneakers and socks. Her sweatshirt came next, leaving the T-shirt she wore underneath. She climbed into the bed, her back to the wall, and put an arm around him. He stirred, mumbled.
She laid her head on the pillow, felt him breathing next to her, and slipped into a deep and dreamless sleep.
TWENTY-SIX
By the next afternoon, the cold front had blown through and gone. Sara drove out to CR-23 in the Blazer, pulled onto the shoulder and parked. The sky was bright blue, dotted with billowy white clouds. Sugarcane moved in the breeze.
Why she’d come here, she wasn’t sure. She got out, walked along the edge of the incline. There was no sign of the teddy bear or cross, though she knew she had the right location. She wondered if a roadside trash crew had picked them up.
She took off her sunglasses, hung them from the collar of her sweatshirt, looked around. Swamp on one side, cane fields on the other, the dark shape of the abandoned Highfield refinery in the distance. Billy’s father had worked there, his grandfather before him. It had been closed for fifteen years, all those jobs gone south, out of the county, the building left to rot.
The air was cooler now, the sun starting to sink. Her left leg ached, and there was still a faint ringing in her right ear. She went back to the Blazer, sat with the door open, got the Aleve from the glove box, shook two out, washed them down with a long swig from a bottle of water. She looked back at the refinery, already deepening in shadow.
She hung her sunglasses on the rearview, got her cell phone from the waistpack, called JoBeth.
“How are you making out?” Sara said.
“Fine, we’re watching TV. I was about to start making dinner. Are hot dogs all right?”
“Sure, Danny loves them. Is there a deputy there still?”
“Yes. They changed shifts again. Should I bring something out to him?”
“Not a bad idea.”
“When will you be back?”
“Twenty minutes, half hour at the most.” She looked at the darkening refinery. “But if Danny’s hungry, go ahead and start without me.”
“You sure?”
“Yeah, that’s fine. I’ll call you on my way back.”
Maybe it’s worth checking out. Have a look, scratch it off the list.
If she called the sheriff, he’d scramble a tactical team double time, maybe twenty men, half a dozen vehicles. Bring them all the way out here so she could sheepishly explain why she’d called in the cavalry for no good reason. Why she hadn’t bothered to check it out herself first, had sat in the car until the men arrived. And if there was nothing there, it would all be a waste. Worse than a waste.
You’re a sheriff’s deputy. You’re out here now. It’ll take five minutes. Have a look, head back.
She shut the phone, dropped it on the passenger seat, started the engine.
As it grew dark, Morgan packed the last of his things in the Monte Carlo, checked the room again. He wouldn’t be coming back.
He sat on the bed, ejected the Beretta clip, reloaded it, slid it back home. He checked the Walther as well, chambered a round, lowered the hammer.
Flynn had called that afternoon, given him a time and place. If it was a setup, Morgan would be ready for him. If the money wasn’t there, he would make Flynn take him where it was. End it there and be on the road by midnight, heading north.
He slid his right pants leg up, exposing the elastic ankle support he’d bought at a drugstore that day. The Walther went into it, tight against the skin, but easily reached. He let the pants leg drop down to cover it.
When he stood, the pain hit him with such suddenness it took his breath away. He stumbled into the bathroom, barely got his pants down before it came, a hot rush that seemed to flush out his entire body. Sweat filmed his forehead. He wiped at it. It was thick, oily, and harsh.
He sat on the toilet until the cramps stopped and his muscles started to relax. When he could move again, he cleaned off, flushed. He drank from the fauce
t, splashed more water on his face. He thought about the Vicodin, decided against it. He would need to be sharp. The pain would be better. It would keep him focused.
After a while, he left the bathroom, shut out the light. He pulled on the windbreaker and gloves, used a hand towel to wipe down everything he might have touched. Then he got the Beretta from the bed and left the room for the last time.
Sara turned down the refinery service road, the Blazer rumbling over the metal bridge that spanned the canal. The refinery was three stories high, set back from the road. Weathered wood, broken windows, gaping holes in the sloped roof. She drove slow, the road pitted and worn.
There was a chain-link fence around the property, sagging in spots. A metal frame gate with steel letters—HF—mounted on it, like the brand from a western ranch. Beyond the gate was what would have been the truck yard, a hard dirt clearing surrounded by overgrown brush and scrub trees. The road continued past, up to some small satellite buildings, shacks really, low and empty, windows boarded. Workers’ quarters maybe. The paint all but stripped from them by wind and weather.
She parked the Blazer, got out. The gate was secured by loops of chain, a heavy padlock. The lock was rusted shut, its coating of grit and dust undisturbed.
She got back in the Blazer, drove up the road toward the shacks, parked in front of them, shut the engine off. As she stepped out onto the hard ground, she tugged the Velcro snap of the waistpack, closed her hand on the Glock, drew it out, and held it at her side.
Three shacks, side by side, the plywood on the windows still tight. The doors had been nailed shut with sawn boards. She tugged at them, no give.
She went around to the back. No windows on this side. There was a small tractor barn farther back, sliding door pulled shut. She looked at the ground, saw no tracks of any kind, as if the dirt had been brushed clean.
Nearly dark now. She went to the barn and pushed at the door. It creaked, slid open a foot. The glint of metal inside, the silver of a high bumper. A truck.
From behind her, Billy said, “Hey, Sara.”
She didn’t move. Her hand tightened on the Glock.
Gone ’Til November Page 18