“Miss Gibson!” Her hissed name came from the direction of the shadowy form. Still uncertain, she was debating what to do when the slam of a door diverted her attention. She looked over her shoulder to see Andre Collette running down the steps of his house. Without another thought, she ducked into the shadows. Andre sped past and Carole Ann knew that he was headed for Nigel Osborne’s, apparently expecting him to be at home. Was Andre panicked and making mistakes, or was Nigel otherwise detained? His rapid, insistent knocking continued for several seconds, then abruptly halted. He ran back toward his house, by-passing it, reaching the end of the lane and disappearing. “What the hell do you suppose that was all about?” Charles whispered.
“Where the hell is he going?”
“He’s probably headed down to the cove, but why would he go down there this time of night on those damn steps?”
“What cove? There’s no road to the beach from this end.” And in the same instant that he mentioned the stone staircase, she remembered it. “You clever bastard,” she whispered, more to herself than to the cop lurking in the shadows beside her.
“Nothing clever about that silly little fuck, with women screaming and doors slamming and him stomping up and down the street like a jerk. I’d like to arrest his ass just for being stupid.”
“And I’d like to know where he’s going,” Carole Ann said, following him down the lane.
“You can’t do that!” Charles caught up to her in one stride and grabbed her arm. “You don’t know who that guy is or what he’s doing!”
“Let go of me, please.”
He dropped his hand from her arm. “The chief will kill me dead if I lose you tonight.” He was close to whining.
“The chief is may kill you anyway for being out here with me,” she replied. “I’m going to find that cove.”
“You know who he is, don’t you? The guy and the girl with him?”
How much did she owe him? Without him, she’d have probably gotten lost looking for Sugar Town in the dark instead of having a bird’s eye view of the unraveling drug cartel. “Nicole and Andre Collette.”
There was a long silence; too long. She began walking down the lane toward the road that must lead to the stone stairway that would take her down to the beach and cove. Is that where Nigel Osborne was? “Collette? As in President Collette?”
She nodded and kept walking, faster now as she reached the end of the lane. Andre had turned left, she thought, so she turned left, Officer Charles hard on her heels. “Who is this guy? Who are these people, exactly?” he hissed into her ear, walking with her step for step.
“The president’s son and daughter-in-law.”
“The chief is going to kill me. Then she’s probably going to fire me.”
“That’s if you’re lucky,” Carole Ann muttered, squinting into the darkness. There was no more road and no sign of the stone steps. There was another cluster of the salt box houses to the left, facing the sea, and, to the right, a cabana of sorts: Tables with umbrellas and chairs and chaise lounges. A sunbathing deck for those not requiring direct contact with the ocean. But that didn’t make sense...she angled off to the right, walking slowly, head down, eyes searching the dark. She stopped, closed her eyes, and tried to envision the cove and the stairs as she and Roland had seen them that day from the ocean. “Where are those damn stairs!”
“I think you’re going the wrong way.”
“And why do you think that, Officer Charles?” Carole Ann asked through clenched teeth, aware of the time and energy she was wasting.
“Because Donna Creighton, she’s our Harbor Patrol squad, says you can see the stairs just after you pass all the beach umbrellas and naked bathers. And there’s the beach umbrellas and I can imagine the naked bathers—”
“And the steps angled slightly,” Carole Ann said running in the opposite direction, toward the cluster of houses that faced the sea. The road was uneven at this point and she lost her footing momentarily. She looked down. The path now was white stones and gravel—and it path led to the stairs. She ran forward, Officer Charles close behind.
The steps were steep and narrow, though there was a wooden railing at regular intervals. Even with it, though, it was not possible to do anything but proceed slowly and cautiously down. When she reached the bottom and her feet touched sand, Carole Ann pressed her back into the cliff wall and moved to her left. Charles followed. They stood looking up and down the beach and out to sea, finding nothing but darkness. “The cove is north,” she whispered, and he nodded, and they sidled along the cliff wall for several yards, gaining confidence and moving more quickly.
Wait!” Charles hissed, grabbing her arm. They stood in the darkness, listening. She closed her eyes and heard it: The whine of a boat motor, a powerful one opened to full throttle. But the sea played tricks with sound and they didn’t see it until the speed boat was upon them, coming from the south and riding high up on its stern, the bow out of the water. And it was running without lights, drug dealer-style. As it approached them, the engine was cut and the craft bobbed in its wake briefly, then drifted to shore. There was one passenger: Nigel Osborne. He jumped out of the boat, in water up to his knees, and waded to shore. The boat seemed to follow him in. He stopped in the sand and removed his shoes, and began to run up the coast. They let him get fifty yards ahead and followed, keeping close to the wall, keeping him in sight.
“I suppose you know who he is too?” Charles whispered.
“Ex-DEA agent” Carole Ann answered. “He was dirty when he was on the job, and he’s positively filthy now.”
“Oh, Jesus, what have I got myself into? Maybe I’ll just kill myself, save the chief a slug. What do you think, Miss Gibson?”
“If we do this right, Charles, you’ll get a promotion and a couple days off. Especially if you blame it all on me.”
“I was going to do that anyway,” he drawled sourly, then halted suddenly, just as Carole Ann did. They both saw the lights in the distance, both on land and on the schooner that loomed in the cove. “Looks like somebody’s planning a vacation.”
“But who?” she asked. “Can you tell? Do you see Andre? Or Osborne?”
He was shaking his head back and forth, exasperated and frustrated with the situation or with her she couldn’t determine. Then, “There, isn’t that Osborne? Walking toward the yacht?”
“Damn! If we lose him now—” She was stopped mid-sentence by yelling. Osborne stopped, too, and looked over his shoulder. Carole Ann followed his gaze. Someone was running toward Osborne and the schooner in the cove, running and yelling. Still holding his shoes, Osborne paused for a moment, then began to walk toward whoever was running toward him and yelling. The words were indistinguishable but the fury was unmistakable. Andre! It was Andre Collette, and he stopped running but he continued to rail and wave his hands. Then Nigel Osborne raised his hand, his right hand, in which there no longer were shoes. And because of the way the sea plays tricks with sound, Andre Collette was sprawled on his back in the sand before the retort of the gun reached their ears, and Nigel Osborne was striding toward his yacht.
“My God!”
“He just killed the president’s kid?” Charles made it a question, the kind of question that begged for an error in the obvious.
Carole Ann sprang forward. Charles grabbed her before she’d gotten two strides ahead. “We’ve got to do something, dammit! We can’t just let him sail away!”
“You think you can outrun him?” Officer Charles challenged, his shoes already off and his Gloc in his hand. He was sprinting toward the cove, his feet kicking up sand in his wake. She bent quickly and untied her shoes and kicked them off and was about to follow when a high pitched scream cut through the gentle night. A high, piercing, blood-chilling scream. A woman’s scream. She looked up the beach. Charles was running harder and schooner was backing up in the water. Another scream, and Marie-Ange Collette ran toward her son’s corpse. She knew it was Marie-Ange because of the hair— even at this distance, at
night, the red and gold and silver mane gleamed and glittered. And she screamed again.
Carole Ann wanted to sit in the sand and weep. Instead, she turned and ran toward the outboard motor boat that Nigel Osborne had left drifting in the surf. It still was bobbing up and down, though it was further out to sea now. She waded into the water and winced as rocks and shells cut into the soles of her feet. Swimming would be faster, and less painful—and her guns would get wet. She dug the automatic out of her pants pocket and stuffed it into one of her shoes, and unstrapped the waist pouch which held her own gun. Holding them aloft, she waded further into the Atlantic, toward the bouncing boat, which seemed to taunt her by drifting further away.
“Would you like a hand?”
She froze and her heart stopped. She turned toward shore and saw Denis St. Almain jogging toward her. “Damn you, Denis! You scared the poop out of me! Again!” She yelled at the top of her lungs, releasing fear and tension and the sorrow she felt for Philippe Collette.
“Serves you right,” he shot back as he drew closer. He threw his shoes into the boat and dove into the surf, reaching the boat in a few expert strokes. He clambered aboard, started the engine, and eased toward her. He kept it steady as she tossed in the shoes and waist pouch, and he extended a hand to help her aboard. “Where to?” he asked and she got her first good look at him. Thank goodness she had recognized his voice.
She pointed toward the running lights of the quickly disappearing schooner.
“You’re kidding!”
“Goddammit! Either you drive the boat or I will!” she screamed at him. He pulled back on the throttle and the boat shot forward, riding on its stern and bouncing hard on the water.
“Slow down,” she yelled into his ear, pointing at Officer Charles running in the water toward them.
“That’s a cop! Are you crazy?”
“You’ve got nothing to worry about, Denis. Besides, you look like shit. Nobody would recognize you anyway.” She couldn’t hear what he said as he cut the engines and drifted toward shore to pick up Officer Charles.
“I called the chief,” he said, brandishing the radio, “and told her what happened out here. She and Donna Creighton took our boat and a Coast Guard cutter is heading this way.” He looked out at the sea, shook his head, and looked back at her. “We’re supposed to stay with the body. And I’m supposed to keep an eye on you.”
“Good luck,” Denis drawled, and beached the boat. They jumped out and Denis caught her arm. “Aren’t you forgetting something?” he whispered. At her blank stare, he added, “Your shoes and your pouch.” She reached in the boat and retrieved her weapons. “You’d make a lousy cop,” he muttered, but she didn’t hear him. She was running across the sand toward Marie-Ange and Andre Collette, reaching for the words she’d offer in the presence of sudden, inexorable death. She could help the other woman grieve that loss, but what words were there to assuage the horror of betrayal? Hers and his.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
“Just exactly what in the hell were you thinking?” David Messinger had been sneering and snarling at her for close to four hours. For the first two or so, she’d been too numb with shock and grief for his nastiness to register. Now, however, she was growing weary of him, of his arrogant posturing, of his refusal to see the larger picture.
“As I’ve said before, at least half a dozen times, I was thinking that it was possible to flush Osborne out into the open. I was thinking that it was possible to separate him from Andre and Marie-Ange, to isolate him and apprehend him and then to deal...to let Philippe...President Collette deal with his family. And I was thinking— I was hoping—that perhaps the worst thing Andre was involved in was the marijuana, that perhaps the field was his. I was even thinking that perhaps Andre had something to do with the refusal to allow the government to use the de Villages construction equipment— before I learned of Monsieur de Village’s illness and Christian Leonard’s involvement. But I honestly never once really suspected Andre Collette of involvement in Paul Francois’ murder, and I most certainly never suspected or would have believed Marie-Ange Collette to be a willing participant in illegal drug trafficking. I would have responded very differently had I known.”
“A little late to be having second thoughts,” isn’t it?”
“Perhaps you misunderstood me, though I’m sure I’m speaking English and not French. I’m not having second thoughts about any of my actions, David. I am, however, wishing that I had known, wishing that some tiny piece of information had pointed to Marie-Ange, because then I could have gone directly to Philippe.” And she smiled tightly at his reaction. Surely he couldn’t think she’d trust him with such a delicate suspicion. Yvette, perhaps, but never him
“You spend a remarkable amount of time outside the bounds of the law for a legal practitioner.”
She finally laughed at him. “If you remember anything about being a lawyer, David, perhaps you’ll recall the bit about one’s responsibility to one’s client. Philippe Collette and the government he runs are my clients. My first duty is to him and his government, not to you. And maybe if you had put the interests of this government ahead of your own petty interests, you’d have had some sense of what was happening here.”
“What the hell is that supposed to mean?”
“It means that your time would have been better spent helping out Yvette and her cops, all of whom have been pulling double shifts these last few days, instead of hopping from island to island looking for permission to hang people!” She was fully, coldly furious, and she made no effort to hide or control her rage.
“And after all he’s done, you don’t think Nigel Osborne deserves to hang?” He was incredulous. “He most likely ordered the murder of that judge in D.C. He most likely murdered Paul Francois himself. And you saw him murder Andre Collette. For God’s sake, woman, why can’t you see that hanging is the best thing for scum like him?!”
“Because, David, I’m looking at the larger picture. Hanging Nigel Osborne will not necessarily kill the root of the evil here on this island. He tried and failed to corrupt Henri LeRoi. He tried and succeeded in corrupting Andre and Marie-Ange Collette. That’s all we know about his actions—so far.”
“And that’s enough!” he thundered.
“No it’s not!” She slammed her palm down on the top of Yvette’s desk, rattling her coffee cup. “Unless you can be certain that every connection to Nigel Osborne is severed, you’re going to have trouble here. So if you hung him at noon today in Government Square, somebody would be dealing drugs in Seacliff and Little Haiti tonight. Don’t forget, David, that Osborne was using Isle de Paix primarily as a staging area— drugs come in here wholesale, to be packaged and shipped out for retail sale. The couple of million annually from the pot field is just gravy.”
He scowled at her through narrowed eyes. “Are you saying you don’t think we got them all? Osborne and that bunch on the boat and those holed up in that camp, and Marie-Ange and Andre Collette? That’s not all?”
“I don’t think so.”
“I don’t either.” Yvette stood up, wanting to pace, but David Messenger and his hostile energy were occupying too much of the room’s space. She sat back down. “We haven’t turned up any cash, David. There’s always cash and guns where there’s drugs. The guns we got, but where’s the money? The Coast Guard didn’t recover any when they seized the boat, and we didn’t recover any from Osborne’s house, or from either of the Collette’s residences, or from that compound in the woods. Somebody’s got the money.”
David was waving his hand back and forth, dismissing her words. “The money could be anywhere.”
“Dealers are never far from their money. This was his base of operations, this is where the money should be.”
“Then you’d better look again at that St. Almain character. If one DEA agent could go bad, so could another one.”
Neither Carole Ann nor Yvette bothered to respond to that, so patently ridiculous a suggestion it was. The DEA finally had c
ome clean regarding Denis, totally exonerating him, once it was clear that an air-tight case could be made against the rogue Osborne. All the pieces were finding a fit, all the loose ends were being knotted. All but a couple, and Carole Ann was beginning to be worried about them. She also was worried that those loose ends represented information that she still was withholding from David and Yvette. Her horror and sorrow over Marie-Ange, coupled with her fatigue, caused her to question the wisdom of her actions. And since they were discussing money, this would be an appropriate time for her to come clean, as it were.
She mentally shook herself. She had a plan, she would stick to it, despite the fact that her thought processes were feeling as if they were made of spaghetti. Clarity occurred, it seemed, only when she was furious with David Messenger. Maybe he’d say something else stupid that she could react to. Otherwise, she’d fall asleep and snore.
There was a knock and the door opened and Officer Charles stuck his head in. “Excuse me Sir, Ma’am, Ma’am,” he said, with extra emphasis on Carole Ann’s ‘ma’am.’ “The Finance Minister is here to see you.”
David Messenger jumped up from his chair, his face full of surprise. Yvette Casson rose more slowly, her brow furrowed. Carole Ann kept her seat; the fatigue had taken control. Carmen Anderson bustled into the office. She grabbed Carole Ann up into a standing position and a crushing embrace, alternating between thanking her and praising her brilliance. “Did you tell David what you did?” she chirped.
“You mean she’s done something else?”
“Professor Anderson,” she said sweetly, ignoring him, “have you met our chief of police, Yvette Casson?” And the two women shook hands and exchanged pleasantries and Yvette offered the Minister of Finance the chair at the table formerly occupied by the Minister of Internal Security, who was standing in the corner rubbing his hands together, a worried look on his face.
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