Time of Departure (40 page)
Authors: Douglas Schofield
“How do you know that?”
“Because she told me she would.” She rubbed away her tears. “She saved mine, too.”
“Who are you?”
“Her daughter.”
“But ⦠that's impossible!”
“I know.”
Rebecca turned and walked away.
March 2, 2011
Gainesville, Florida
Tribe checked the street as he drove toward his house. There were no vehicles that didn't belong. He swung into his driveway and nosed the car up to the garage door. When he got out, he glanced around warily. With luck, the media hounds had moved on to the next big story, and the driveway ambushes were over.
Maybe, at last, he could get back to his life.
He scuttled to the rear of his station wagon and dropped the tailgate. As he lifted out the bags of groceries, he congratulated himself on his brains and his luck. Brains because the cops hadn't found the photographs, and luck because that young prosecutor and her ex-cop pal had done such a flawless job of tainting the evidence.
Young prosecutor â¦
That one made no sense.â¦
It made no fucking sense at all!
He pushed the perplexing thoughts away.
His attorney had told him the search of his residence at the time of his arrest would have been tougher to challenge. “Search incident to arrest,” Bannister had called it. When he'd admitted, obliquely, that there might be some evidence in the house connecting him to the missing girls, he'd been confident that attorneyâclient privilege would prevent Bannister from ever repeating that to anyone. The lawyer had told himâthrough clenched teethâthat if the cops had found that evidence, he would definitely be facing a jury.
The cops were diligent, but not one of them had been smart enough to wonder why every single interior door in Tribe's house had a hollow-core design. Every door was adorned with an identical decorative panel. All someone had to do was remove the panel on his bedroom door, and he would have found an envelope filled with Polaroid photographs, each one featuring one of the girls lying naked on a bare mattress on a dirt floor.
Naked ⦠and terrified.
Luckily, none of the cops had been clever enough to notice that the only modern feature in Tribe's forty-year-old house was its interior doors.
Earlier this morning, he'd pried the panel off. He'd spent an hour lingering over the pictures, wallowing in the memories. But he hadn't retrieved the envelope just for titillation. The time had come. The photos had to be destroyed. As soon as he put the groceries away, he would burn every one of them and flush the ashes.
It was something he should have done a long time ago.
He slammed the tailgate and carried the groceries into the house. He set them on the kitchen counter. He tugged a folded newspaper from one of the bags. He leaned on the counter, studying the front page story.
There was a rustling noise behind him.
“Hello, Tribe.” A woman's voice, silky and calm.
He spun around.
“You should have listened,” the voice continued.
Tribe stared, uncomprehending.
“Listened to what?” He stared at her. “You look like that woman!” His jaw contorted. “I don't understand!”
A gloved hand raised a matte black nine-millimeter pistol. It was mounted with a silencer. “Do you understand this?”
Tribe went pale. “Yes.”
“I saw the photographs. I laid them out on your dresser so the police will find them.”
Tribe let out a resigned breath.
She fired. The slug tore into his chest. He flew back, caromed off the counter, and crashed to the floor. A grocery bag toppled, spilling fruit and canned goods over his twitching form.
Rebecca Hastings knelt in front of him. She looked straight into the dying man's eyes. “My mother left you a bullet. Maybe you should have used it.” She pressed the muzzle of the pistol against his nose and pulled the trigger.
The bullet ripped through his skull. Blood and brains tattooed the floor and cupboard behind him.
She rose. She picked the newspaper off the counter. She studied the headline:
AMTRAK DISASTER!
27 CONFIRMED DEAD; 1 MISSING
An aerial photo showed wrecked railcars lying zigzag in shallows next to the base of a damaged trestle.
Embedded in the article's text was another photograph.
A photograph of her mother, Claire Alexandra Talbot.
The caption read:
CONTROVERSIAL GAINESVILLE PROSECUTOR CLAIRE TALBOT MISSING IN AMTRAK WRECK
Rebecca folded the newspaper. She knelt down. She lifted Harlan Tribe's bloodless right hand and placed the newspaper under it.
She left the house.
*Â Â Â *Â Â Â *
Just before sunrise on the day Marc and Rebecca Hastings would leave Florida forever, they parked their U-Haul van in the breakdown lane on US 17, just south of the bridge over the St. Johns River. They walked slowly out onto the span. Three hundred yards downstream, a crane car sat on an undamaged section of a railway trestle, heaving and groaning. Thick steel cables sang like giant bowstrings as the crane strained to raise shattered railcars from the murky waters below.
Marc and Rebecca stood next to the railing, watching the recovery operation.
Behind them, cars and trucks whipped past, engines straining, tires clacking and rattling on the uneven bridge surface.
But they heard nothing.
Time stood still.
Rebecca clutched her father's arm.
He sagged against the railing.
She held him while he wept.
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Douglas Schofield
was raised and educated in British Columbia, where he earned degrees in history and law. Over the past thirty years, he has worked as a lawyer in Canada, Bermuda, and the Cayman Islands. He has prosecuted and defended hundreds of cases of murder, sexual assault, and other serious crimes. Schofield and his wife, Melody, live on Grand Cayman, along with their most excellent and amazing talking cat, Juno. Visit him at
www.douglasschofield.com
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Contents
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This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously.
TIME OF DEPARTURE.
Copyright © 2015 by Douglas Schofield. All rights reserved. For information, address St. Martin's Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.
Cover design by John Hamilton Design
Cover photograph © Agha Waseem Ahmad/Stocksy
The Library of Congress has cataloged the print edition as follows:
Schofield, Douglas.
    Time of departure / Douglas Schofield. â First edition.
        pages; cm
    ISBN 978-1-250-07275-7 (hardcover)
    ISBN 978-1-4668-8461-8 (e-book)
    1. Women lawyersâFiction.   2. Public prosecutorsâFloridaâFiction.   3. Cold cases (Criminal investigation)âFiction.   I. Title.
    PR9275.C393S36 2015
    813'.6âdc23
2015022092
e-ISBN 9781466884618
Our e-books may be purchased in bulk for promotional, educational, or business use. Please contact the Macmillan Corporate and Premium Sales Department at (800) 221-7945, extension 5442, or by e-mail at
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First Edition: December 2015