“I didn’t get your name?”
“Green, Det—” She interrupted herself. “Lani Green.”
“How do you take it? Or would you prefer coffee? I can make some in the house.”
Isaac guided Lani into the garage by her elbow and offered her a chair at his table. She moved along with him like a ghost. The room was ablaze with radios and TVs. “I have to apologize for the noise, Ms. Green. You see, my brother has a mental issue, and the sound allows him to concentrate on being normal. Otherwise he would be . . . difficult to be around.”
“Oh.” As she sat she noticed Jack lying on the floor, his eyes focused upon her.
She recognized his face, having looked at pictures of him a hundred times over the past few days. “With sugar, please, tea is fine.” Her eyes darted back and forth from Walker to Isaac.
“Earl Grey, you might find it calming.”
With shaking hands, Lani accepted the fine china teacup, rattling it ever so slightly on the matching saucer. “So this must be the infamous Jackson Walker?”
Jack’s eyes bulged as he shook his head vigorously from side to side. He tried to groan a word through his sewn lips.
“Indeed. He’s in a cranky mood this morning, please just ignore him. He is normally quite congenial.”
Lani shook her head slightly and sipped some more of the flowery but bitter black tea, her eyes flowing back and forth between Isaac and Walker again. She couldn’t resist; her years of training got the better of her. “Aren’t you afraid of being found out, Mr. McFadden?”
“Why the concern, Ms. Green? And by the way, I know all about you, how you became a member of the church.” He sipped his tea, delicately holding the handle of the thin china cup between his thumb and forefinger. “I also know that you are a cop. You might just have sold yourself too cheaply. I hope that what you received in turn was worth dying for.” He smiled, looking at her, his brows pushing down ever so slightly.
“Dying, Mr. McFadden? Is that a threat?”
“Take it for what it is. You are dealing with a bunch of devil worshipers. If you play with fire, you are bound to get burned . . . that’s all.”
“You are on the prime suspects list. I redirected Ramirez—my partner—away from your file more than once. I did the same for Henrietta LePley. Ramirez is dead,” she said with a slight quiver to her voice. “But still, it’s only a matter of time before the police are onto you.” She shook her head.
“My brother and I are cleaners, Ms. Green. Do you know what a cleaner is?”
“Of course.” Her hands grew heavy. She dropped the tea cup on the floor; it shattered into dozens of pieces. She tried to stand. “Christ, I’m sorry.” She fell back into her chair.
Isaac stood and stepped to her side. He could tell that her body was now numb, and her eyes slowly turned to meet his. “Removing bodies and any evidence of their existence is our family business. We have been doing it for more than a century. The Church of Satan, The Brotherhood of Set, or whatever you choose to call them, they pay their bills quite lavishly. By tomorrow, your remains will be nothing more than a trace of protein floating in the vast river of grass. The Everglades are very efficient at cleansing; it is a good partnership. Your DNA will be spread between here and Florida Bay within a week. You see, I have poisoned you, Ms. Green. You will be able to see and feel what is happening to you. Your mind will be unaffected. You know that by now, don’t you? Your motor skills have left you. By nightfall, your heart will slowly stop beating. It really is a terrifying way to die, fully aware of it all. Yet, even so, young Mr. Walker will wish he had the same fate as you by the time we are finished with him.” He removed the handgun that hung at her side. She was helpless to resist. Isaac watched as she slumped to the ground, her body limp as a rag doll.
“Pity. That was Mommy’s favorite cup, Jimmy.”
“She will have to fucking pay. Right, Isaac?”
“Yes Jimmy, she will have to pay. She is a cop who knows too much. We will have to put her on the hooks and wait for nightfall, then you can bleed her out.”
Jimmy chuckled. “Yep, on the hooks for you, girlie.”
The brothers picked up Lani, each by an arm, and carried her to the back corner of the building. A series of tracks lined the ceiling, leading to various parts of the large room, as well as leading out over the back dock. On the track were numerous large metal hooks that were used for hanging cattle carcases ready for butchering. Jimmy moved a small footstool over so that he could guide two of the hooks to either side of her neck and under both of Lani’s collarbones. Isaac lifted her up as Jimmy drove home the sharpened hooks with a small mallet.
“I do wish Eric wasn’t dead, Jimmy. This is work unbefitting a gentleman.” Her weight was released and she was left to hang. Blood trickled out of the wounds to wet her shirt.
“She’ll last until midnight, I bet,” Jimmy chortled.
Lani’s eyes stood out on her face like perfect little circles, her pupils dilated black holes in the whiteness.
Jimmy looked at Jack, a horrible smile forming, his yellow teeth clenched together. Jack started to struggle for all he was worth. Jimmy went over to him and kicked him in the back of his head, temporarily stunning him and making Jimmy giggle. “Once they’re on the hooks, they don’t struggle.”
Isaac moved between Jimmy and Jack, putting his hands on his younger brother’s shoulders. He looked him straight in the eye. “The old woman said she wants him alive, at least until tomorrow.” Jack calmed down, hearing Isaac’s words. “Leave him out, he’s not going anywhere trussed up like that. Tie him to the couch.”
****
Isaac and Jimmy went outside to the car. Isaac pondered how they would get Hunter out of it. “Sometimes a simple plan is the best. Brute force and a bullet,” he muttered under his breath. “This should have been Eric’s job, little brother. We’ll just have to make do, won’t we?” Isaac looked through the window, measuring up what he thought the senator would do when the door opened. “Grab his legs as soon as I open the door, Jimmy. If he backs himself in, you’ll have to go and get him.” Isaac took Lani’s handgun out of his pocket and fiddled with it for a moment, taking the safety off.
Jimmy opened the door and as he did so, the senator tried to kick him in the chest. Jimmy grabbed on for all he was worth, pulling him halfway out of the car. Isaac aimed Lani’s handgun and fired one shot, blowing off half of Hunter’s knee. He stopped struggling instantly. Jimmy dragged him out of the car and into the driveway. Isaac meshed his hands into the man’s hair, getting a good grip, then whacked him on the back of his head with the gun. Hunter was more than adequately subdued.
“That’s a nice piece of work, brother. Once we take care of our visitor, I want you to take this car to that sinkhole out past the Freel’s place. We haven’t used it in years, been saving it for a special occasion.”
Isaac’s phone rang. He pressed the answer button and held the device up to his ear. “Yes, Henrietta . . . I understand. We’ll be ready and waiting.”
“One more for the fucking hooks?” mumbled Jimmy. His smile was wide as his puckered mouth would allow.
“I’m not sure about the hooks, little brother.” Jimmy’s smile evaporated. “Tie him up and gag him. The old woman wants this one alive as well.”
****
Henrietta put the cell phone back in her purse. She could see Buck watching her in the rear view mirror as he drove. Henrietta liked to sit in the back. She sighed and muttered as if talking to someone beside her. “Yes it’s a damn shame.”
Buck turned his head towards the back of the car, doing his best to keep his eyes on the road. “What did you say? What’s a shame, Henrietta?”
“Keep your eyes on the road, please. You are getting too old to drive like that. You know by now that I talk to myself. It is a witch’s prerogative. It’s not wise to questions a witch’s prerogative, Mr. Henderson.”
Mason Matye, who was sittiing in the front passenger’s seat, chuckled.
>
“We have the senator. That was Isaac McFadden. We have to clean up this mess, it’s time to kill them all, Buck. It’s time to cut our losses. The senator, Walker, anyone else that we deem to be a loose end, must die.”
“And the farmland?”
“Plan B,” said Henrietta.
“That doesn’t sound promising.”
“Subtlety has always been our strength, Buck. That which has transpired has not been subtle. We have orchestrated assassinations in the past that still garner attention. Politicians are not immune to being killed. We are nowhere close to achieving what we want, and events have spiraled out of control. It’s time to regain control. We have lots of money, more than we know what to do with. It is time to step back. How far is it to the McFadden estate?”
“Estate?” Buck said. “I’d say an hour with this traffic. What about the senator? How the hell are we going to dispose of him?”
“I think we need to find an untimely end for Hunter. Have we found out where his family is? We shouldn’t have let them out of our sight,”
“We have her under surveillance. Hunter’s wife has gone north.” Buck returned his gaze to the road. “I didn’t think Hunter would defy us.”
“These things happen. Have Mrs. Hunter poisoned at your soonest convenience, she knows too much.” Henrietta folded her hands behind her neck and stretched. The day’s events had given her a headache.
“As you wish.” Buck turned his head back to the front of the car as they neared a stoplight.
“We will use Walker. If we set it up correctly, it will work nicely. His hands will be all over the Hunter assassination and the killing of the rest of his family. The Clewiston deaths will disappear. Then we will have Jackson Walker come to some fiendish end. The Georgia Satanists are devilishly good at such things, aren’t they Mason?”
“Indeed they are, Miss Henrietta. If there is any way that my people can help, we would be more than happy to lend a hand,” said Mason.
Henrietta smiled. “Thank you, Mason, but it won’t be necessary. I have a dear friend who is associated with the church in Savannah. You see Buck, people want to believe in evil and the things that evil people do. It makes for great press. Nobody likes to watch pleasant news; it’s boring. In a couple of days, we will leak the news that Walker has been spotted in Georgia. It’s messy, but I think it will work out just fine. I will need you to deliver him.”
Buck hesitated for a moment, not happy with her last sentence, but he knew better than to argue. “You have never been wrong, Henrietta.”
“Not in over a hundred years. We will have to try and bend the governor’s arm. I feared that it would come to this. Some of our people know some of his people. We’ll save our farmland yet, Mr. Henderson. Now, concentrate on the road. Get us there in one piece, if you will.”
25
The Everglades
“STAY LOW, JANIE. THESE folk don’t take kindly to people trespassing on their land. Old Pete has more bluster than a trussed-up gator. I want to ask him a few things.”
Nate navigated the prop boat up against the rickety dock. Josh jumped up to tie the boat down. As he turned to grab the bow line, he was greeted with the muzzle of a double-barreled shotgun. An older man wearing overalls and no shirt spit a black gob of tobacco juice into the water next to the dock. His voice was heavily accented in Floridian drawl.
“You got no business here, Injun. Back your sorry ass outta here.”
Josh could tell instantly that the Lee brothers were not their quarry.
“No harm done, brother. Any idea where the Walker boy might be?”
The man lowered his gun. “I’ve heard what I’ve heard and the swamp don’t give up its secrets. Get off my property.”
“The McFaddens?” Josh probed.
The man smiled. “I don’t know nothin’ about that. They’re a bad lot, them. Wouldn’t surprise me. Stay away from them, and you ain’t heard nothin’ from me. Y’all hear?”
“What about the Peters, up on Okeechobee?”
“Like I said, I don’t know nothin’ about them either, so get outta here.” He raised the gun again.
Josh knew better than to press the matter. “Thank you, sir.” Josh turned to Nate. “Back ‘er out.”
Old Pete fired back a parting comment. “Y’all don’t come back here. We stay off Injun lands. You stay off ours.”
Josh nodded, slowly backing his way into the boat, not taking his eyes off the man. He motioned for Nate to back away from the dock. Once they were a good distance away, Janie nudged Josh in the shoulder. He turned his head to the side so he could hear her.
“So why did we go there?” she shouted over the loud engine.
Josh yelled back. “I didn’t think it would be him, but he as much as told us that the McFaddens might be involved. There could be a few others, but I figure they’re one of the closest possibilities. Whatever is going on, or whoever is responsible, has its roots in the southwest. Now I know there are a few other families located on the East Coast, but we have to deal with the obvious.”
“Are they one of those devil-worshiping families Jack was talking about?”
“I don’t know about devil worship, but they’re notorious for doing dirty work for the old families. I think they might know what’s going on, if they’re not involved. We’ll need a plan if we’re to get close to them.”
Janie took a moment to think. “So . . . you have no goddamned plan?”
“Sorry Janie, I do have a plan, but things don’t always happen as you expect them to. I’ve never been to the McFadden homestead. I don’t know the lay of the land.”
“You’re fucking kidding me. I’m no expert, but if we roar in there and we hit pay dirt, the bastards are going to shoot us. I would if I were them. Pull this goddamned boat over and turn off the engine. I need a fucking cigarette. You guys are goddamned lucky I came along. You can’t just go into some devil’s hole like the Lone Ranger and Tonto. Christ, I’m no munitions expert, but I have a handgun and I see two hunting rifles. That guy back there, Old Bart?”
“Pete.”
“Okay. Old Pete could’ve blown off your head in two seconds and done some serious damage to Nate and me. We need a machine gun or something.”
Josh motioned for Nate to slow the boat. Nate left the boat idling in the middle of the channel. Janie didn’t take twenty seconds to light up her cigarette, taking a long drag.
Nate spoke up. “She’s right. I’ve been thinking the same thing. What if we pull up some way from the place and sneak in?”
“Pull up and sneak in? This is getting better by the minute.” Janie pulled her hand through her blonde hair and shook her head. “I think we should call the cops. This has gone too far. Why haven’t the cops checked out these people?”
“Hey Janie, calm down. I don’t know that they haven’t.” Josh put his hands on her shoulders. “All I know is that we’ve waited around for a few days now and there’s a good chance my cousin is in that place. If we wait any longer, he might be killed. This is swamp justice, darlin’. It’s been going on for a hundred years.”
“Fucking great. Don’t you guys have a tribe or something? I’m not up on my native culture bullshit, or whatever you want to call it. It’s just the two of you and me, shouldn’t we have some backup?”
“Yes, we do have a tribe, but it’s not called that anymore, and there’s not many of us, and even fewer who would risk their lives for Jack.”
“What about the poor bastard who had his head shot off on that island? Didn’t he have some cousins we can call?”
“Good point,” said Josh.
Nate punched Josh lightly in the shoulder. “She’s right. We could call up Blaze and Robbie and tell them to cover the front of the place so we have some backup.” He looked Janie in the eye.
She exhaled a plume of grey smoke. “Blaze and Robbie? Great, they sound like action heroes.”
Josh let go of her shoulder. “Got any better ideas?” He waved the smoke
from his face. “Here’s what we’re going to do. We’ll get the boys to watch the other side of the place. It’ll take some time for them to get here. Then we’ll scope the place out. We can pole the boat up close. It’s a big estate, if what Gramps says is true. We’ll check things out the best we can. I don’t trust the cops not to fuck this up and get Jack killed, but we’ll call them if things look dicey. Fair enough?”
Janie tossed the half-finished smoke into the water. “It doesn’t sound like a great plan, but at least we’re not heading in there like a bunch of idiots. Are we going to ask these McFaddens anything if we’re greeted like we were by Old Pete?”
“Not sure.” He looked to Nate. “I think we’re heading to the right spot. We don’t need to overthink this. If they are the bad guys, they’ll be shooting and asking questions later. I’d like to get a look at the place up close. Nate, call those guys up. Never know, they could be high as kites at this time of the night. Janie.” He put his hands on her shoulders. “I just want to see if he’s there. We may not be able to tell, but I have to try. You can stay in the boat if you want.”
Janie contemplated the offer. “Nope. I’m not sitting out here on my own. What if something happens to the two of you? I don’t know how to run this thing,” she patted the side of the boat, “and I don’t know where the hell I’m going. I’m coming with you.”
****
“The old woman’s here,” Isaac shouted into the shop. Jimmy didn’t answer. He stepped further in. “They’re here, Jimmy. You’ll have to turn down those televisions a bit.”
Jack was propped up against one of the easy chairs, his hands and feet still bound. From time to time he would look at the woman hanging from the ceiling track. She’d long ago lost consciousness. He shivered. It was only time before he suffered the same fate. He worried about his feet and hands. He couldn’t feel them anymore, and he feared that he might have suffered irreparable damage.
Isaac’s words came to him in a haze as he drifted in and out of his stupor. The old woman? He craned his head toward the door.
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