The Killing King of Gratis (24 page)

T
ommy didn’t have to be convinced to get everyone he could find to start looking for Meg and Peck. He knew Anna would never get over her children being harmed. She might never forgive him whether it was his fault or not.

Dispatch got the word to every deputy, on duty and off, to meet him at the sheriff’s office inside of twenty minutes. He would have at least thirty five men at his disposal, and they would fan out all over the county until those children were found. With the State Patrol he would call for help, he would have fifty men, maybe more, within the hour.

Delroy couldn’t tell him how he knew Skipper was the one who took the kids, only that Cozette’s brother Matthew was shot by a man in a small boat. After shooting Matthew, that man took the children. Of course Delroy knew it had to be Skipper. Everything pointed to him.

Tommy knew the logical conclusion was that it had to be Skipper, too. For now, though, he told his men to look for Skipper and any other single man with a boy and a girl. He didn’t care if they came across a single dad eating with children at the Pot Luck Diner, Le Café, or the country club dining-room, they were to be checked out. No reason not to be thorough, not now.

Tommy also asked the State Patrol to come with a helicopter unit from the Forsyth public safety training facility. They could be over the county within an hour and a half and might be able to find something, even at night. He hoped so. The children’s odds of survival decreased steeply with each hour that passed.

Delroy dropped Amy at Johnnie’s house before going to the hospital. She protested, telling him she could help the search. He convinced her that she would be more valuable helping Johnnie call everyone she knew in town to be on the lookout, and to be ready to call the press. If he called them they were to get the word out to every connection they had, and quickly.

Amy reluctantly agreed. She called Johnnie before they got to her house, and both ladies started working as Delroy pulled out of the driveway. Amy kissed him on the cheek and whispered “you’ll find them” before giving him the keys to her BMW.

Delroy arrived at the hospital within minutes of leaving Amy and was glad to see Kero’s truck already in the parking lot. He knew it would be there before he ever saw it.

The Gratis Hospital had only one lobby and there he found Kero holding Cozette. She was sobbing and broke away from Kero when Delroy walked in. She flew up and punched him in the face. A slap would have been more lady-like, but the punch was more appropriate.

“You son of a bitch! You messing around looking after that sorry ass Newt, driving all around town with that lady attorney who’s all of the sudden your damn girlfriend, and you let this happen.”

Delroy, still a bit dazed from the punch, tried to break in. Cozette wasn’t done with him.

“You have kids Delroy. They are your responsibility and you should have been there, but no, you let my little brother stand in front of the shotgun shell that you should have caught. If he doesn’t bleed to death he’ll lose his leg, at least. He might be a big dumb guy to you, but he’s my baby brother! To hell with me for ever listening to your shit, and it’s all shit from you Delroy, it’s all shit, every last bit of it.”

Cozette started sobbing again. Delroy wanted to hug her but didn’t know what she would do if he tried. Kero stepped in and took Cozette in his arms. The trio stood there for a moment, the air stirred only by Cozette’s tears. Kero spoke.

“Cozette, baby, Delroy’s had a hard summer too. I know he never meant for Matthew to get hurt in any way. If he could, he would stay with you all night, even if you punched him every few minutes, but the children are missing. You know we have to find them, and find the man that shot your brother. We’ve got something to give back to that man, I promise you.” He let go of her and now only held her hands.

Cozette spoke, almost in a whisper, without looking up.

“Then go give Skipper what he’s got coming.” She looked at Delroy and continued. “And don’t overthink it when you go looking, try to be a man. Don’t worry about nothing but those kids when you find Skipper. Leave out what’s right and what’s wrong, what’s legal and what ain’t. Do what you need to do for your family and mine, and don’t worry about anything, or anyone, else.”

Delroy met Cozette’s gaze and nodded. He had no words for her, and so turned and left. Kero, after squeezing Cozette’s hands one last time, followed him out the door. They got into Kero’s truck and headed towards Daddy Jack’s. The old shotgun houses and burned out yarn mill drifted by as they rode, silently watching. Kero finally broke the silence.

“What do you want to do, old buddy? Just say it and we’ll do it.”

Delroy answered in a calm monotone.

“The sheriff has all of his men staking out the usual places, going everywhere, to all of the Motte family properties, and all the roads going in and out of Gratis. He’s got an eye in the sky, and I imagine the Glynn County Sheriff is heading to Skipper’s place on East Beach right about now. Amy and Johnnie Lee are getting ready to call everybody they know in the media, if it comes to that. There’s got to be a good chance Skipper knows he’s been found out if he has a police scanner with him. Shit, the news pukes are gonna to be all over this story when it hits, even worse than now. He won’t be going back to where anyone expects him to be, but he’s been pretty good at doing the unexpected. Other than that, I’m not sure what to do. I could go say something to Anna, but that’ll get us nowhere. There’s got to be something we can do that the others aren’t. I just don’t know what that is.”

Something really happening to Meg and Peck, the thing he prepared for all summer, was still the last thing he thought would actually happen. Delroy needed to think fast, but he was having a hard time thinking at all.

Kero drove another two hundred feet before he braked hard and turned the wheel. Cars behind him and in front had to brake and swerve to make sure they didn’t hit him. The truck did a one eighty just before they got into downtown. A man yelled “crazy bastard” when he crept around them but neither of them heard. The friends looked at each other as they sat in the idling truck. Delroy wasn’t sure what his friend was doing, but he was glad it was something. Anything was better than the nothing he had right now.

“Well shit Delroy, we have to have a plan right now. I have an idea so you better hang on.”

With that Kero shot the truck forward, running the mouthy “bastard” yeller into the ditch as they flew by. Delroy didn’t know where they were going but hoped his friend’s plan would take him to the children. At this point that hope and his friend were all he had.

S
kipper was not very happy about the snatch. He was mad at himself for not planning better and angry that he had to shoot Matthew. He wasn’t morally opposed to shooting him, only that it had to awaken Cozette if she was at the house.

He was waiting in his boat, hidden behind honeysuckles about seventy yards down from her dock, when the children pushed their boat into the channel. He smiled at his luck as they floated in almost a straight line toward his boat.
Well, luck and strategy
, he thought.

The looks on their faces when he grabbed their boat with his grappling hook was almost worth the wait. He looked forward to the other looks he would get from them, especially from Meg. She looked lovely under the darkening sky of the Neck, an orchid ready to be plucked.

When he ordered them into the boat, the boy actually lay down and appeared in shock. Meg, however, struggled with him, and he had to slap her and tell her to shut up. Evidently he didn’t slap hard enough because she let out a scream that would have startled his rotting father. Almost immediately, the huge lumbering mass that was Matthew came charging out into the back yard, yelling at the boat to stop.

Skipper pointed the boat back toward the dock. Matthew must have been surprised by this maneuver because he didn’t seem to notice when Skipper lifted his shotgun and fired. All Skipper saw was a mass of humanity hit the ground. He turned his boat and sped down the channel toward the Bird.

The whole thing was rather inelegant. It also changed his timeline. He would have to dispose of the children sooner than he planned to, and do so somewhere between Cozette’s house and his cruiser. The clearing he had picked out down river was not going to work because it was too far away.
Damn, I should have already moored the cruiser down river
, he thought, wondering what his father would say about his lack of precision.

If Cozette wasn’t home yet, and he didn’t know whether she was or not, he still had time to do things right. If she was at home, though, he needed to get rid of the children quickly and get out of there as soon as possible. He decided to go ahead and shoot the two and throw them overboard. He was reaching for his gun when Meg moaned.

She was sitting in the bottom of the boat by this time, covering Peck with her body. Meg understood that the man who took them had a gun and was not afraid to use it. She wouldn’t scream again, but couldn’t stop herself from moaning with the pain and fear.

God that’s hot
, was all Skipper could think. Maybe he should go ahead and get rid of the two but he couldn’t, not after that moan.

“She’s got a few more in her,” he barely whispered to nobody.

It was then he decided to go ahead with plan B. He was smart enough to know that one always needed a contingency if things went wrong. Good attorneys did that. If the jury didn’t bite on one argument they might bite on another. You had to be ready to argue either.

Skipper’s plan B was the old four-wheeler he kept near town in an old textile warehouse his father had leased, on a hand shake, from a former client for the last twenty years. He cranked it up not two weeks before and filled it with gas. Earlier in the week he stuffed a change of clothes and fifteen thousand dollars into the utility chest on the back, just in case. All he had to do was take the boat down the river, put in at one of the caves going into the tunnels running under Gratis, and take that tunnel underground to the warehouse. When he was a child he explored the tunnels under that warehouse many times, never knowing that he was preparing himself for today.

He would then drive out of town, looking like any other hunter or tree farmer going to check his land. Taking back roads and trails, he would go to an old hunting cabin his family owned under his mother’s maiden name in the next county. They kept an old jeep there, and, with a little luck, he would make it to Savannah or Jacksonville. From there he knew lots of ways to get out of the country. With a little time and distance he was smart enough to make himself invisible. He just had to get out of Gratis.

First he had to make it to the tunnels. He had planned to go to a cave opening on the riverbank not too far from the warehouse, about three more miles upriver. That would be the most efficient way. Watching the children squirm at his feet, however, it became obvious to him that he would have to change that part of the plan. There was a far more suitable place for his session with Meg. The girl and her brother would be found in the place where the whole summer began. Elegance would be achieved after all. He smiled at the thought.

The three of them whipped down river, the boat flying now they were in deeper water. The children huddled in the bottom, Skipper’s prized catch, were in for a surprise. They would be visiting the turtle palace one more time. This time would be their last, and this time they wouldn’t leave, not a chance.

K
ero and Delroy were speeding down River Road and now on the edge of town. As they did so they neared the old grounded shrimper, grinning at them from its watery nest.

“Delroy, it seems to me that Skipper probably ain’t gonna be on the roads or water if he’s heard all the sirens. He’s going to ground. We won’t hear from him if he has anything to do with it. You know he’s not going to show up at his daddy’s door to sit down with the Sheriff.”

Delroy nodded. It was good to hear his friend make sense and sound sane. Right now he needed that.

Kero continued. “Here’s what I think. I think he’s going to the tunnels. He knows them. He grew up here like we did, and his daddy must own a few properties connecting to them. Shit, he knew them well enough to take Millie there when he started this whole killing thing. He doesn’t just know them, he feels at home when he’s there.”

Delroy kept nodding. His friend was right. Without asking he knew where they were going.

“So, I think I’ll take you down to where Skipper did his first killing, down to where they found Millie’s body.”

Delroy mouthed the words “turtle palace” to himself.

“I’m going to leave you there and then I’m getting into the tunnels at Daddy Jack’s and coming back to you. Maybe we can corner him, who knows. Maybe we’ll get lucky. Hell buddy, I don’t really know what else to do, but that sounds like a plan that makes a little bit of sense to me.”

It made a lot of sense to Delroy. Skipper’s murders were a quilt of actions and reactions. Millie’s death hurt Gratis, Althea’s hurt the investigation, Merry’s hurt everything. Even the booze party Skipper threw with his father’s corpse must have dealt with something in his twisted mind.

Hurting (he couldn’t even think the word ‘killing’) Meg and Peck where he started it all would wrap it up nicely. Better yet, it would show Skipper’s contempt for his pursuers. How inept could they be? He would laugh at them.

How much did he laugh at me when I told him he was doing a good job? When I told him I would help him if he stopped working for his daddy and hung his own shingle?
Delroy winced at his own stupidity.

When they got near, Kero turned off the truck’s engine as well as the lights. They coasted another fifty feet and pulled off the road. They were just above the cave where Peck saw the turtles that awful day. It seemed like years ago to both of them.

Kero parked the truck, handed a flashlight to Delroy, and got his pistol out of the glove box. They crept down to the water’s edge, not wanting to spook anyone. The two weren’t adept at sneaking, however, and small rocks poured down the bank in front of them and plopped into the water as they crept. If Skipper was down there it wouldn’t be much of a surprise party. Fortunately, at the bottom, all they found was a small boat tied to a tree, shoved into the mud on the bank.