Deadline (28 page)

“This is the shorter route out. It’s not far, but it’s not an easy walk through the woods. The road swings around to the south and connects to the one that dead-ends in the marsh where your car’s at. Couple of deputies are watching it till you get there. Someone will drive you to it.”

“I’ll appreciate it. Thanks.”

A uniformed man approached at a jog. “Deputy Tucker? Can I have a sec?”

Dawson turned away to let them confer and looked toward the cabin, which had become a beehive of activity. Over the course of the past few hours, crime-scene personnel had arrived. Some were uniformed. Others wore civilian clothes. One was in a suit and lace-up shoes, others wore blue jeans and T-shirts with the various agency names stenciled on them. The options depended on rank, Dawson supposed. They came and went as their duties required.

He was happy to remain as detached as possible.

He had, however, been questioned at length by Tucker and Wills, who’d arrived shortly after the first responders, thrashing their way through the forest to reach the spot. They’d soon been joined by sheriff’s deputies from the South Carolina county and by several FBI agents from Knutz’s office. Apparently he was coordinating things from Savannah.

Each agency wanted to question him independently, so he was called on several times to describe Jeremy’s condition when he arrived. The video off his cell phone, as he’d guessed, was poor, but Jeremy’s confessions could be clearly heard, the most shocking of which was that of staging Congressman Davis Nolan’s suicide.

The day had turned hot and sticky, the overcast sky creating a greenhouse effect that by noon had shirts sticking to backs. It was long past midday now. Dawson was bone tired and emotionally drained, but he had answered their multitude of questions patiently, realizing that the sooner he did so, the sooner he would be allowed to leave.

It seemed that that time had finally come. After his brief conference with the uniformed officer, Tucker walked back toward him, accompanied by Wills who was mopping sweat off his hangdog face with a folded handkerchief.

Tucker said, “False alarm. They were holding a white-haired man who roughly fit Carl Wingert’s description at a Dairy Queen. The old guy had stopped to get a Blizzard. Wasn’t Carl.”

“He won’t be that easy to take,” Dawson said.

“The son of a bitch,” Wills said under his breath. “I’m no fan of Jeremy Wesson, but…Jesus. What kind of man could run away and leave his kid like that, knowing he was dying?”

Only one answer came to Dawson’s mind: Carl Wingert.

A suspension of activity drew their attention to the cabin. The three watched solemnly as the stretcher bearing Jeremy’s body was maneuvered through the narrow doorway, carried by members of a rescue team. They placed it on the ground in the clearing to wait for the helicopter that would lift it out.

“Where will he be taken?” Dawson asked.

“Back to us, eventually,” Tucker said. “He died in their county, but he was our fugitive. They’re cooperating with us.” Turning back to Dawson, he said, “They’re more than a little curious about you.”

“Why?”

“They want to know if you should be arrested.”

“For what crime?”

“Stupidity, mainly. Care to share what the hell you were thinking to come out here on your own, track them down, approach without caution?”

“I was after an interview.”

“Well, you got one. More than you bargained for.”

“A lot more,” he said quietly.

“Much as it pains me to say it, we’re glad you found him. The video will exonerate Willard Strong. It’ll also close the book on the DeMarco girl’s slaying.”

“And reverse the ruling on Congressman Nolan’s suicide,” Dawson said.

“How do you think Ms. Nolan will react to that?” Wills asked.

“With mixed emotions.”

They must have read from his expression that he wasn’t going to discuss it further with them. Tucker said, “You’ll be around?”

“Until Carl is captured.”

Tucker didn’t like the sound of that. “Look, don’t pull any more fool stunts, okay? You’re not a cop.”

“So you’ve said.”

“I don’t want to have to cart you away in a body bag.”

“I’ll keep that in mind.”

“Say, listen.” Tucker backed down, glanced toward the cabin, flicked a bead of sweat off the tip of his nose. Coming back to Dawson, he said, “I’m man enough to admit when I’m wrong. I was wrong. Bygones?” He extended his right hand. Dawson shook it.

Tucker nodded, but as he was about to walk away in step with Wills, Dawson said, “You’re not done here.” His solemn tone grabbed their attention. They looked at him expectantly. “The porch was an add-on,” he said. “Jeremy built it to protect the grave.”

“Grave?” Wills said. “Whose?”

“His mother’s.”

A
melia was in the beach-house kitchen when Dawson knocked once on the utility-room door, then walked in. She wanted to melt at the sight of him, but somehow maintained her dignity. Both of them seemed a bit shell-shocked, unsure of what to do or how to behave. Was there a rule of etiquette for this situation?

They stared at each other until it became awkward. Finally she spoke. “Hi.”

“Hi.”

He was wearing a white cotton shirt, tail out, sleeves rolled to his elbows, over a pair of jeans, all of which looked great. But he seemed immeasurably fatigued. “Are you all right?”

He raised one shoulder in a slight shrug, nodded once. “All things considered.”

“They called from the ferry dock to tell me you were on your way.”

“Had to run quite a gauntlet to get through. Island is crawling with cops of various sorts. But that’s good.”

“I feel safe. As long as I don’t look toward Bernie’s house. I can’t look at it without shuddering. I hope I’ll get over that in time.”

He gave a nod. “Is the woman deputy still staying here in the house?”

“She is. She’s on break at the moment. Several of the officers are staying in the house you rented. They take shifts sleeping, eating. Since you were coming, she figured it would be okay if she went next door for a while.”

“Hmm.” After that noncomment, his gaze moved aimlessly around the kitchen—more to avoid looking directly at her than to look at something else, she thought.

“Are you all right?”

He sharp-focused on her again. “You asked me that already.”

“Oh, right, I did. I’m sorry.”

“I’m fine. Are you?”

“Yes. Except, about Jeremy…” She took a deep breath, let it out through her lips. “I’m not sure what I should be feeling.”

“Understandable.”

“I don’t grieve for him. But I do feel sad.”

“I can relate. Believe me.”

Dozens of questions about Jeremy’s final minutes were on the tip of her tongue, but she couldn’t bring herself to ask them. Not yet. She wasn’t ready to hear the details, and Dawson seemed equally disinclined to provide them.

They were acting like strangers, not like two people who had shared a passionate farewell kiss the night before. Although she wanted to feel his arms around her, to be surrounded by him, warmed by him, she hadn’t made an initiating move. Neither had he. It wasn’t for lack of desire. That hadn’t changed. His eyes burned with it.

But Jeremy’s death had made a difference. Had he died remotely, distantly, it might not have had this divisive effect. But Dawson had been there when he drew his last breath, and that had created an indefinable chasm between them. They were trying to find a way to bridge it.

Unable to bear the teeming silence any longer, she said, “Eva called to tell me that you’d stopped by at the hospital.”

“Briefly. Soon as I’d gone to the hotel and cleaned up. I knew Headly would want to hear everything firsthand. He was—”

“Oh, I know how he was,” she said, laughing softly. “I wouldn’t be surprised if the nursing staff has a picture of him they’re using as a dartboard. He’s not an ideal patient.”

“His mood will improve soon as he starts getting feeling back.” A few seconds elapsed, then, “Eva said you stayed with her all night. She appreciated it and so do I.”

“I wouldn’t have left her alone. Despite the surgeon’s positive prognosis, she was terribly worried about him. And about you.”

He shifted his weight from one foot to another, looking uncomfortable. “Tucker said he called you.”

“I’d made him promise to the moment they located you.”

“I would have called you myself, but they wouldn’t let me speak to anyone until I’d been questioned.”

“Headly told me that.”

“Then when I was free to call, I didn’t have my phone. They took it as evidence because Jeremy was recorded on it. Besides—”

“You didn’t feel like talking.”

He gave her a weak smile. “Right. After going over it repeatedly with the authorities, no, for a while there, I didn’t feel like talking anymore.”

“I needed some down time to let my mind settle around it, too. I wanted only to be with my children.”

“Do they know?”

“What would be the point of telling them?”

“None.”

“I didn’t think so, either.”

“How are they?”

“Want to see them?”

He grinned. “I could do with some innocence.”

They climbed the stairs and moved down the hallway, past the closed door to the guest room that Stef had used. “I spoke with Mrs. DeMarco a short while ago. They’d been notified of Jeremy’s confession. Stef’s body will be released to them tomorrow.”

“Good,” he said. “And terrible.”

“Yes.”

When they entered the boys’ bedroom, they heard them quarreling in the connecting bathroom. “Hey, what’s going on?”

At the sound of her voice, their silence was abrupt. Amelia shot a suspicious look over her shoulder at Dawson as she pushed open the bathroom door. When the boys saw him, they shoved their way past her and launched themselves at him.

He hooked his hands under Grant’s arms and used him as a weight to do a biceps curl, clenching his teeth and groaning with the effort, which caused Grant to giggle. When he set him down, he socked Hunter’s shoulder. They fired questions at him, but, talking over them, he asked what all the noise had been about.

Hunter quickly gave the classic reply. “Nothing.”

“Hunter said we shouldn’t tell Mom, but I think we should.”

“Shut up, Grant!”

“Hunter, I’ve asked you not to tell your brother to—”

“It’s about our—”

“Grant, shut up!”

“—penises.”

Hunter looked like he wanted the floor to open up and swallow him. Bright spots of color appeared in his cheeks.

Amelia cleared her throat and, with as much composure as she could muster, asked, “What about them?”

“
Noth-thing
,” Hunter said, shooting his younger brother a threatening glare.

Dawson turned to Amelia. “I’d like an iced tea, please.”

“What?” Confused, she looked from him to the boys, then back at him. Then, “Oh! Of course. Tea. Good. I’ll just go and…” She left them and closed the bedroom door behind herself.

Ten minutes later, Dawson rejoined her in the kitchen. He went straight to the glass of tea she had dutifully poured and drained it without taking a breath.

“Well?”

“Well,” he said, stretching out the word, “they’ve both experienced what I assured them was a perfectly normal biological phenomenon.”

“Ah. I thought that might be it. I’ve noticed that
phenomenon
on occasion, but always pretended not to, as any lady would.”

“Hunter experienced a rather, uh, stubborn one today. He was afraid it signified something terribly wrong with him, which he wanted to keep from you so you wouldn’t worry or get upset.”

“That sweetheart.”

“Grant was just as considerate of your feelings. He felt you should be told about the affliction in case they both died of it and you found them dead in their beds without knowing what had killed them.”

She covered her mouth to smother a laugh.

“I gave them my solemn promise that you couldn’t die from it, although,” he added in an undertone, “it might sometimes feel like you can. Hunter asked if
it
would ever stop doing
that
, and I told him no. If he’s lucky.”

The two of them started laughing at once and they laughed for a full minute. “So much for their innocence.” Wiping tears of mirth from her eyes, she said, “Lord, it feels good to laugh. Since I’ve known you, we haven’t really laughed together, have we?”

“There’s a lot we haven’t done together that I’ve wanted to do.”

The mood shifted from lighthearted to serious in the span of a single second. They continued to look at each other, but neither moved to close the short distance between them. Amelia decided to address the issue. “For reasons I can’t explain, it seems inappropriate for us to pick up where we left off last night.”

Looking pained, he said, “Yeah.”

They could hear Hunter and Grant tramping down the staircase. Grant called out, “Dawson, will you play cars with us?”

Amelia said, “But I don’t see any harm in you staying for dinner.”

He glanced toward the oven. “Something smells good.”

“Roast chicken with lemon and rosemary.”

“Sold.”

The boys came into the kitchen, claiming his attention and ending any chance for a grown-up conversation. But over their heads, he said to her, “After dinner, we have to talk. There’s something you need to know, and I want you to hear it from me.”

Carl was never without a fallback position. Only a fool would leave himself with just one option, and he hadn’t escaped capture this long by being a fool. He’d taken extraordinary measures to keep the cabin from being detected, but if anyone got wise to it, he had the Airstream. It was his personal escape hatch, kept secret from Flora and even from Jeremy. He could retreat to it should the situation ever go to shit.

Which is exactly what had happened.

He’d taken one look at Jeremy’s bullet wound and had known immediately that his son wasn’t going to make it. It might have been a slow, internal leak, but without surgical repair, he would have eventually been drained dry.

There was no sense in crying over it. It was what it was, and Jeremy knew that as well as he did.

“This place was great so long as nobody was looking for us,” Carl had told him. “But now, the heat’s on. They’re gonna be combing the countryside for us. I’ve got to get out of here. You know that, don’t you?”

Of course Jeremy had recognized the necessity of his retreat. If the head of the snake was chopped off, the snake died. Carl couldn’t be captured or killed. If he was, everything he’d stood for, everything he’d done, would have been for naught.

Jeremy didn’t argue with his decision or plead with him to stay. He didn’t ask to be taken to a hospital where his life might have been saved. No, Jeremy had accepted his fate like a true crusader.

Carl could have done without seeing the tears in his eyes when he’d handed him the revolver loaded with only one bullet. Jeremy had inherited that sentimental streak from his mother. It manifested itself at the worst times, when it was damned inconvenient or impossible to deal with.

Like at Golden Branch. He’d thought Flora would never stop bawling, even after they were safely away. Like that time when he’d cut short their Canadian vacation. Both she and Jeremy had cried then. The last time Jeremy had visited the cabin before she died, the two of them got weepy.

Carl didn’t have any patience for tears. Regret? Wasted energy. You did what you had to do. You moved on.

Like he was doing now.

He’d come to the trailer the night he left Saint Nelda’s Island. He’d had another car parked in a long-term garage several blocks from where he’d left Bernie’s car. At that point, no one was after him. The greatest danger he’d faced had been walking after dark in that part of town, where the crime rate was high. Bernie of the rickety hips would have been easy prey, but he reached the garage without being accosted.

It was an old facility. No cameras, no nosy attendant. He’d reconnected the battery cables, which he’d left disconnected so it wouldn’t run down, and the car started without a hitch. He’d crossed the state line into South Carolina singing along with the car radio.

The fifties-era Airstream, sans trailer, was parked not too far as the crow flies from the cabin. It had been there since the day he’d bought it off a commercial fisherman who’d fallen on hard times and was moving to live with his in-laws somewhere in the Midwest.

He’d been happy to unload the Airsteam to the elderly man who had a hearing problem and walked with a cane. The story Carl had spun was that he was escaping the nursing home that his ungrateful children had consigned him to. The fisherman, resentful of Fate himself, sympathized, took his cash, gave him a bill of sale, and never looked back.

Over the years, the aluminum tube had sunk deep into the soil. A thick vine had grown up over the rounded rear of it and over one third of the top. That helped camouflage it, although someone would have had to have ventured deep into the boondocks to spot it in the first place.

What he feared most was that he would return to it after an absence to find that a homeless person, teenagers looking for a hangout, or meth cookers had made themselves at home.

But the trailer was derelict enough to discourage even the most desperate trespassers. The night he’d left Saint Nelda’s, he’d found it empty, but musty-smelling. It had been so stifling inside, it was like being in a convection oven. But he’d spent almost twenty-four hours there before reuniting with Jeremy at the cabin.

During that time, he’d prepared his hideout for when it might be needed, which a gut instinct had told him would be soon.

His instinct had proven to be unfailing. Headly’s presence in Savannah had represented a turning point in their forty-year-old rivalry. For the first time in their turbulent history together, they were in the same place at the same time.

It had been seventeen years since Carl had been credited with a crime, but the FBI agent hadn’t given up the chase, retired, gotten slow and fat. No, Headly was here, and, according to news accounts, he was recovering well from the gunshot.

It seemed to Carl that a long-overdue showdown was inevitable. He looked forward to it. Last night, after bidding Jeremy a final good-bye, he’d come to his hideaway to plan and prepare for it.

He’d provisioned the Airstream with nonperishable food, bottled water, and paper goods. He had changes of clothing to fit various guises. He’d stockpiled items bought over time at hardware and variety stores. One never knew when something would come in handy.

This morning, he’d shaved every hair from his head, using several disposable razors and large amounts of shaving cream in order to make his scalp as slick as a billiard ball. He’d also shaved his eyebrows off. Eyelashes weren’t a problem. He didn’t have many left anyway.