Hell's Bay (25 page)

Whatever passed between John and the woman caused Milligan to lower his aim, take hold of his paddle, and ease alongside the bass boat.

“Give me that.” Mona reached for the camera.

I released it into her grasp, leaned forward, and squinted at the scene. John rose unsteadily to stand on the seat of the kayak. The woman set her pistol on the console and bent over the starboard gunwale and held out her hand. Milligan took hold of it, and she boosted him on board.

They exchanged words, then she returned to the wheel, cut it sharply, and accelerated back toward the creek.

“What the hell just happened?” Rusty said.

“Didn't look like he was forced,” said Holland. “That fucker was on the dark side the whole time.”

Mona lowered the camera and stared down at the water slapping against the transom. I watched the bass boat carve a sweeping turn into the creek mouth, then disappear behind the veil of mangroves.

All I could be sure of was that Milligan knew exactly how defenseless we were, and if he'd teamed up with the woman, as it appeared, we were now outgunned, and we'd been seriously outsmarted. If massacring us was their mission, they had no reason to wait. Once Milligan filled her in about our lack of defense, they could simply return within range and circle the Mothership with guns blasting.

I scanned the restless bay, watched the drifts of foam gathering at the shoreline. The cormorant nosed around the bobbing kayak for a few more minutes then flailed its wings and executed a clumsy takeoff. Around us the wind hummed through the railings and set off a chorus of clangs and tinkles as it rushed across the open decks.

“That slime weasel,” Holland said. “That lying cocksucker.”

Mona's eyes were blurred. Her shoulders were hunched forward, and for a moment I thought she might be about to hurl herself overboard.

“It doesn't make sense. Dad and her. It makes no sense at all.”

“Who is she, Mona?”

She shook her head, her lips sealed tight against the words muscling into her throat.

“Inside,” I said. “Everybody inside.”

Rusty moved to the door and Holland followed, but Mona kept her grip on the rail, squinting against the gray sunlight that pulsed off the surface of the bay. She was focused on the trail of white froth, the dying wake of the bass boat.

Wrapping an arm around her shoulder, I drew her from the edge and steered her toward the doorway. Rusty waited there, her gaze alert to my arm cradling Mona. As I approached, her lungs emptied in a slow, silent heave, and her shoulders sagged. The recognition settled on her face, grew firm and final.

As I passed, I dodged her gaze and guided Mona into the salon and eased her onto the couch. She slumped back against the cushions and stared through the starboard bank of windows toward the distant creek mouth.

“What's going on, Mona? You saw something. You recognized her.”

Before she could answer an electronic ring tone sounded, then it played again. The first dozen notes of some chugachuga rap song.

Annette extracted the cell phone from the holster fixed to her belt. She flicked it open with a practiced snap and huddled forward, pressing it to her ear.

In unison Holland and Rusty went for their own phones, but after they'd fiddled with them for half a minute, it was clear that neither had reception.

Annette glared up at me as I positioned myself in front of her and held out my hand.

“Tell her this trip's a total bust,” Annette said into the phone. “There won't be any article. I'm not about to give these people one word of promo. They're a bunch of worldclass losers.”

She got out one more bit of juvenile complaint before I bent down and pried the phone from her hand and snapped it shut.

“You fool,” Annette said. “That was my editor.”

“You didn't say we were in trouble. You didn't ask her to send help.”

“What difference would that make? She's in New York.”

Holland groaned.

I opened the phone. In the small screen's bottom right corner the signal-strength indicator was showing a single bar.

It was instinct that made me dial Sugar's cell. I pressed the phone to my ear and walked to the rear door as the wavering ring faded and returned.

Apparently when the wind swung us around on the anchor, it pushed us thirty or forty yards farther east toward the distant mainland, just enough to bring us into the fringes of the nearest cell tower's coverage.

I heard Sugarman answer. Down a well full of static.

“Listen, Sugar, it's me.”

I heard him say my name, then his voice broke off.

I pulled the phone from my ear and checked the reception. Nothing. I opened the salon door and stepped outside, extended the phone toward the east, feeling like some Stone Age fool presenting a sacred stone to the sun. Still nothing.

I went back into the salon, grabbed a pair of scissors from a kitchen drawer, located one of the laminated aerial photographs Rusty had made, and snipped out the section I wanted and tucked it inside my shirt.

I went back onto the deck, climbed the starboard ladder to the roof. Keeping my profile low, I held the phone up to the sky. Still no bars, still feeling like an idiot.

Maybe it was some electromagnetic fluke that brought us fleetingly into range, something totally unrelated to the houseboat's shift closer to the mainland. But there was only one way to find out for sure.

A moment later when Rusty appeared on the roof, I had the green kayak loose from the bungee cords and was angling it over the edge of the upper deck.

“What the hell're you doing?”

“Stay low,” I said. “Down, Rusty.”

She glanced back at the creek mouth, then settled to her knees.

“Thorn, talk to me.”

“I'll stay in the mangroves.” I held up Annette's phone. “Just go far enough to get a signal.”

“You're a crazy man.”

“Roger that.”

She helped me get the kayak down to the water, bringing it alongside. She held it steady while I climbed into the cockpit.

I wriggled a hand into my shirt and came out with the section of the laminated map. An overhead view of Cardiac Bay's eastern edge, our mooring spot, and the creeks and channels just to the east. I got my bearings, ruled out a halfdozen dead-end creeks, and studied the maze of wider canals that penetrated the solid forest of mangroves. I was looking for some waterway that carried me as far east toward the civilized mainland as I could get.

Then I looked out at the water, sighting across almost a mile of open bay, and located what appeared from the photograph to be the veiled opening of a narrow canal that led maybe a hundred yards almost due east. A canal I would never have noticed without Rusty's aerial image. Only trouble was, the canal dead-ended on the fringes of the inlet where the shooter was.

“Pretty funny,” said Rusty. “You, of all people, depending on modern technology.”

I peered at the horizon as if I could catch a glimpse of the wispy beams of electrons showering down from distant towers.

“Yeah,” I said. “Funny as hell.”

I pushed away and dipped a paddle into the choppy water. Bobbing ten feet off the stern, I brought it around to face her.

“Tell me something, Rusty.”

“Yeah.”

“Why'd the shooter leave the walkie-talkie?”

“What?”

“If she thought she'd killed me already, why leave the radio behind? And more than that, why bring the damn thing along in the first place?”

She gave me a bewildered shrug.

“I left it on the bar,” I said. “Keep an eye on it.”

And I dug the paddle in deep.

 

 

 

 

A few minutes before his three o'clock at the Pine Tree School, Sugarman made a quick detour by Dillard's office. The good doctor was at lunch, so Sugar took a run at his secretary, Mary Suarez, a brisk woman of about fifty, with closecropped hair, orange lipstick, and a pugnacious squint.

As Sugar inquired about the clothing Abigail Bates was wearing when her body was found, Mary stared down at her telephone, and her right hand inched toward it as if she was considering summoning security.

Sugarman waited, staring at the top of Mary Suarez's head. He was trying his damnedest to give the woman the benefit of the doubt. Maybe she was weak on social skills. Bashful, tongue-tied.

“May I assume your office returned Ms. Bates's property to the next of kin?”

She flicked her eyes up and took him in. No, not bashful—something else entirely. She studied the baseball cap he was holding. She probably assumed he'd doffed it in a display of servitude.

Sugarman bulled ahead.

“So I'm asking if you kept any record of those articles in your evidence package? Photos of her clothes, jewelry, things of that nature.”

The woman clucked her tongue three times. “Are you insinuating this office is less than professional?”

“No, ma'am. I'm not doing that.”

“Well, of course we keep records of the deceased's possessions.”

Sugarman shrugged.

“I need to take a look.”

Before she could refuse, Sugar said, “As Dillard told you, I'm here to double-check the sheriff's work. Something doesn't smell right.”

“Well, it's about time someone double-checked that woman.”

Mary Suarez pushed back her chair, got up, and tramped into an adjoining office. In half a minute she returned with a red file folder. She slapped it down on the edge of the desk and stepped back out of Sugarman's range as if sharing his breathing space might pose a health risk.

Carefully, Sugarman set the Marlins cap on her desk, picked up the folder, and leafed through the documents and photos. Same autopsy shots he'd viewed earlier. And there were pictures of Abigail Bates's clothes laid out flat on what looked like a surgical table. A vented fishing shirt, frayed jeans, white lacy underwear, and one pink tennis shoe with plaid laces.

“Nobody asked me,” Mary said, “but it's obvious there was foul play.”

“So you agree with Dr. Dillard.”

She weighed her response with an evasive light playing in her eyes. Not about to be conned by some outsider.

“Based on what I've seen so far, I'm not so sure,” Sugar said. “The sheriff's decision might be right. This whole thing could be nothing more than an accidental drowning. I'd have to see something a good deal more convincing than some bruises on the woman's arms.”

“Oh, my,” she said, her voice tightening. “I didn't realize I was in the presence of a forensic pathologist.”

Sugar touched the bill of the cap.

“There's a hair snagged on the snap of this ball cap,” he said, keeping his voice as quiet as he could manage. “Please treat this item with the same care you'd use on any crime-scene evidence. And when he returns, have Dr. Dillard check that strand of hair for postmortem banding. Pay special attention to the proximal root.”

She narrowed her eyes.

“DNA analysis will be critical. That strand of hair might belong to Ms. Bates, or it might belong to the killer. You want to write that down, Mary, or can you remember it?”

She gave him a freeze-dried smile.

These people were starting to seriously piss him off, but somehow Sugar managed to bid the woman good-day and get out of the office without strangling her.

It had been such a long time since he'd felt the death-ray of bigotry aimed in his direction, he wasn't sure if he was reading it right. Maybe he was just being thin-skinned. Yeah, he'd have to work on believing that.

He was getting into his car when his cell phone chirped. He dug it out, snapped it open, and Thorn spoke his name.

“Hey, Thorn? How's it going?”

But the connection broke. Sugar sat for a minute waiting for Thorn to call back, but he didn't, which didn't surprise Sugar. He could count on one hand the times Thorn had used a cell phone. Had to be something pretty special to make him do it now. Probably wanted to brag about a fish they'd caught, some hundred-pound tarpon. Sugarman got the cell number off his ID screen and returned the call, but was forwarded to the automatic voice-mail system. The party he was calling was unavailable.

Sugarman tried to hear again the tenor of Thorn's voice. A little strained, hurried. Not surprising that he might be getting cranky after twenty-four hours crammed together with so many people. Sugar let it go.

 

Sasha cut the engine and the boat coasted deeper into the narrow inlet. Griffin was propped up against the transom, eyeing Milligan, who stood on the other side of the console. The big man would have to take two or three steps to be in arm's length of Sasha, time enough for her to put three rounds in him.

“I can deliver Thorn,” Milligan said again. “No risk to you. End this whole thing. You take him down, we get out of here, nobody has to know who you are or why you did it. You just disappear.”

“We're past that point,” Sasha said.

“Mona put you up to this. My daughter's paying you.”

“Sit down and shut up.”

“Then it was Carter. Carter Mosley. That bastard wants control. He's behind this whole thing. Tell me, goddammit. It's Mosley, right?”

Sasha cut her gaze to Griffin. He had his eyes open and he was sitting up, his breath noisy, but he was still alive. His skin had taken on a waxy gleam.

“Get over the side,” Sasha said.

“What?”

“Over the side. Into the water.”

“I'm offering you a deal. I'll give you Thorn. That's who you want.”

“Over the side,” she said. “I'm not saying it again.”

“Look, I'm an ally. I can make anything happen you want. Name it, it's yours. We'll find your son the best damn doctors in the world. A new home, cash. You tell me what you want. A million dollars, two. Give me a number.”

“Your mother said the same thing, just about those exact words. Right before I drowned her.”