Bullet Beach (20 page)

Fortunately Cross was shoeless and fortunately, as well, he knew where the creaks were in the floor. He could walk straight out of his little hole and walk close to the far wall. He held the extension cord like it was a garrote. There was a moment when his movements struck him, cartoon like, Sylvester stalking Tweetie Pie.

Eddie uttered a sound unlike any Cross had heard before as the chord caught the intruder on the throat. Eddie lurched forward, reaching for the pistol. But Cross pulled back suddenly, the wheels of the chair slipping out from under its occupant. Cross reversed the direction of his pulling, bringing the body that landed on the floor, up to a straight sitting position so his captive wouldn't slip out of the cord.

Eddie reached back, gouging his nails into Cross's hands. Cross, crouched over Eddie, but still on his feet, straightened and kicked Eddie in the kidney. He dragged the more compliant victim back and then brought his head back hard on the floor. Cross moved toward the .38 and got it.

Eddie pulled the cord from his throat. His face was blood red, his eyes bloodshot. His breathing was labored.

‘You're a dead man,' Eddie said hoarsely.

‘You?' Cross said, shaking his head at the recognition. ‘You think you're going to leave here alive?'

Eddie was the guy with the shotgun.

‘You must be E. V. Lancaster,' Cross said. ‘Taupin's silent partner.'

Eddie just stared at him as if his gaze were capable of murder.

‘I want you to stand up slowly,' Cross said, ‘and empty your pockets on the table there.'

Eddie continued his stare as he got to his feet.

‘Empty your pockets.'

Eddie had a practiced glare. No blinks.

‘If I haven't evaporated by now, I think your technique needs some work. I don't want to convince you how serious I am by first putting a hole in the floor then in your foot and then your knee . . . you know where I'm going with this, right? We can skip the stages. Empty your pockets.'

Eddie smiled.

‘One more time. I'm inches from being arrested for the murder of two people, possibly three. Do you think I'm worried about killing an obvious intruder with his own gun? Do you think I have one ounce of sympathy for a guy who set me up for a lethal injection?'

Eddie's smile seemed to dim a bit.

Sunglasses. Electronic gadget for a BMW. A wad of bills, mostly ones. Finally, a wallet.

Cross took the wallet and opened it one-handed.

The driver's license was displayed and with the advance of morning, Cross was able to read it:

Everley Vance Lancaster, it read. Fifty-two years old.

‘Everley,' Cross said. ‘What kind of name is that?' Cross didn't care one way or another, but he wanted to get under the man's skin.

The man didn't show any stress or anger. ‘Resident of Warsaw, Indiana.'

‘Warsaw? Orthopedic capital of the world,' Cross said, but he was more interested in the proximity of Warsaw to Lake Wawasee. Close. ‘What are you? Taupin's gardener?' The guy replaced his glare with distant indifference. ‘Why did you kill them? What did they do to deserve it?'

‘You and I have nothing to talk about,' Lancaster said.

‘Everley, we have all sorts of things to talk about. But I'm easily bored.'

The problem was that Cross didn't know what to do with him. He picked up Lancaster's cell phone, punched in redial.

‘Lancaster,' a voice on the other end said. It was a statement not a question.

‘This is Cross. I have something that belongs to you.'

There was silence.

‘Number here says I'm talking to Raymond Taupin.' There was no response. ‘Cat got your tongue? I've got your hired hand here, a Mr Everley Vance Lancaster. I believe he is on the board of several of your businesses.'

The other party disconnected.

‘Now what do I do with you?' Cross asked the man staring at him with absolutely no expression on his face.

As the sun rose, the light came in the room behind Lancaster. Cross decided to move around so the light would be in the intruder's eyes, not his. That's when he saw the image on the computer. It was a photograph of Maya in Cross's arms, smiles on their Halloween faces, pumpkins on the farmhouse porch behind them. He clicked off the photo and another appeared. This time the four of them – Cross, his parents and Maya, stood beside the mailbox. The rural route number was clearly marked on the outside of it as was the word, ‘Eaton,' the small town where the Crosses lived.

Cross felt a moment of insurmountable panic before a clear, cold focus set in. There was no question now about what to do with Lancaster. No uncertainty. This was a man who likely shot two young people in cold blood. This was a man sent to kill him. There was nothing to keep him from getting at what was left of his family. Even if he were behind bars, what would keep Lancaster from telling Taupin about Cross's family and what would keep Taupin from hiring someone else to do his dirty work?

Lancaster's expression had not changed.

‘I think you went over the line,' Cross said. ‘I suspect that before you die you're not going to tell me why you killed those two kids.'

Lancaster closed his eyes in what appeared to be a blink in slow motion.

‘You don't have the cojones,' Lancaster said. He said it as a person who was intimate with Spanish would say it, the ‘h' sound powered out of the throat with disgust.

‘A few minutes ago you were right,' Cross said.

‘You are a soft American,' Lancaster said. ‘Where I come from we devour and spit out people like you.'

‘Is that right?' Cross lifted the pistol higher, pointing it at Lancaster's forehead. ‘You come from some place real special, I bet.' Cross said, doing his best to insult the man.

‘Colombia,' he said proudly, defiantly. ‘You do not know what a man is.'

Cross lowered the weapon, briefly looking away. Lancaster lunged forward. Cross shot him, the hole nearly centered in the intruder's forehead. The body continued its flight forward. Cross stepped out of the way.

‘Well now,' Cross said, his body beginning to shake. He saw the bloody flotsam and jetsam that struck the window on the other side of the room. The cold passion he felt moments ago turned into nausea.

He stepped outside to get some fresh air. A squirrel darted across his vision. He looked up. The sky was blue. The world hadn't noticed. The nausea passed. He stood for a moment, looking at the clouds. What should he do now? Hide the body? He was, after all, a suspect in two murders already and was connected to what was for the moment regarded as a suicide. That could turn back on him as well.

‘I'm going for the big prize,' Cross told Kowalski. He had retrieved his cell phone and went back outside. He felt better out there.

‘Yeah, what's that?'

‘I just killed a man.'

‘That's a helluva way to start the day. I usually have a cup of coffee.'

‘A Colombian employee of Raymond Taupin, E. V. Lancaster.'

‘Lancaster is Colombian?'

‘I killed a man,' Cross repeated.

‘Anyone with you?'

‘Just the corpse. And he's not much in the way of company. What should I do?'

‘You have to call the police,' Kowalski said.

‘I need to put the pieces together before I'm locked away forever.'

‘OK, OK. Let me think.'

Cross's brain went dead. If thoughts were to be had or solutions found, it would be up to Kowalski.

‘All right. We can buy you time. I don't know what you can do with it, but I suspect you want to get to Taupin.'

‘Yes.'

‘You have transportation?'

‘Yes,' Cross said. ‘If the police haven't inventoried Edelman's car lot, I have a car no one knows about except you.'

‘Go. I'll wait an hour and call your girlfriend, Lauren Saddler, and tell them you killed an attacker, that you are afraid for your life and then I can draw out negotiations for your surrender.'

Through the trees Cross noticed a car pull up. Because it was down a slope, all he could see was the color. Black. Probably a big, official, Ford Victoria. He decided not to wait for verification.

‘Gotta go,' Cross said. He went inside, grabbed a shirt and some shoes, his own pistol and as the knock sounded on his front door, he was out the back, and over the fence. He slipped on his shoes and shirt, tucked the pistol in his pocket and headed for the Trooper.

Two things were on his mind. One was his family. He needed to see and talk to his parents and to Maya. Next was Lake Wawasee. He had to talk with the Taupin's daughter. He had to make the connection between the two victims He liked driving when he had to think, to solve problems. Once out of the city, with a quiet secondary highway ahead of him, he began to breathe more easily.

TWENTY

If Maureen were looking out of the window she would see only two vague human forms, ghosts in the darkness. If she were awake she might have heard their low, slow voices trying to reach across their boyhoods and into the long stretch of their very separate lives. Below them, down to the right were the distant sounds and glittering lights of revelry from popular beachfront clubs and down to the left was the dim glow of a sleepier beach, luminescence dissipated in the night. When the wind shifted, sometimes they could hear the regular rhythm of the waves as they erased evidence of the day's activity.

‘Where have you been?' Fritz asked.

‘Around. A lot of places. You?'

‘I looked for you once I got free.'

‘Free?'

‘From the institutions. I was seventeen when I got out. Looked for you. Nobody home. Nobody around home. Nobody knew where anybody was.'

‘Mother died. The old man went into a home.'

‘Where'd you go?'

‘Hopped the rails to the west. Then went into the Army,' Shanahan said.

‘When?

‘Soon as I could.'

There was no rush in their conversation, no excitement.

‘He was bad news, wasn't he?'

‘He was.' Shanahan understood the reference. It was their father. ‘He died unhappy.'

‘The world refused to acknowledge his way of doing things, seeing things. Thought I was evil,' Fritz said.

‘The seizures?'

‘Yeah, how'd you know?'

‘Word around here is that you still have them.'

‘When I go on a binge and forget my meds.'

‘How long were you in an institution?'

‘Two of them. Second one had a real doctor who figured out I had epilepsy, that I wasn't possessed by the devil.' He laughed. ‘Though maybe I am.'

‘Jury still out on that?'

‘It's out until the end,' Fritz said. ‘Then I went to a foster home. On to the Merchant Marines, fell in love or lust with Southeast Asia.' Another long, but strangely comfortable silence. ‘This place can get into your soul if you let it.' More silence. ‘You have a beautiful woman there.'

‘True.'

‘You have a good life?' Fritz asked.

‘Can't complain. Especially the last few years.'

‘Why did you try to find me?'

‘I told you. You haunted me. Couldn't get you out of my head. Curiosity maybe. Guilt maybe. I shouldn't have let them take you away.'

‘You didn't let me down if that's what you think. You couldn't have done anything. Neither of us really knew what was going on. You know Dietrich, it's all all right. I mean it. This is good, you and I talking together. It's a way of wrapping things up. Right?'

‘I'm not trying to hurry it any, but yes.'

It seemed right that the conversation should take place at night, in near dark – there was a moon and some stars. And in the near quiet there were occasional sounds from life below. Yet the moment was dreamlike, an aside from real life. He had inhabited that odd reality shortly after he'd been shot. The world would have seemed off kilter to a sane, everyday mind. But this was different. The unknown depths of the ocean below them and the unknown yawn of the dark universe made ordinary conversation seem unnecessary, petty. Yet they continued.

‘You feel like an outlaw?' Shanahan asked.

‘Why?'

‘So many people are after you, including the Thai government. Smuggling is a criminal activity.'

‘A little righteous, brother.' He laughed. ‘Right and wrong, Dietrich? Well, look at it this way. A bunch of corrupt generals are running Burma. I could also say ruining Burma. Money from rubies goes to them, not to the people in any way. As beautiful as it is, it's not a place for people to live. Elections ignored. Human rights. What human rights? Outside of the North Koreans, the Burmese are the most isolated in the world. Their quality of life sinks lower and lower as members of the junta get richer and richer. It's like the diamond mines in Africa, Dietrich. Labor and hardship gets you nothing. Treachery and greed win the day.'

Fritz stopped talking. Shanahan didn't fill the void.

After a minute or two, Fritz picked a dangling thread.

‘So I thought I'd try treachery and greed.'

He took a deep breath then went quiet again. The night surrounded them again for a while. Then from the quiet, ‘They also have the best rubies in the world, Dietrich. And I've seen a lot of rubies. What I have is one of the best and one of the largest.' Fritz scooted the chair closer to his brother. ‘It's called a pigeon-blood ruby. Found nowhere else but Burma. It's more than seven karats. Only one larger has ever been found.'