Deadline (31 page)

He placed his hands on her hips as though to forcibly push her away. But upon contact, his fingers reflexively curled inward, digging in to hold her tighter. One heartbeat later, his head dropped forward. Grinding the crown of it into her middle, he rasped, “Yes, you are.”

She held his head close, her fingers moving through his hair. “Thank you for telling me.”

He looked up at her. “You’re thanking me?”

“Who else has heard that story?”

“No one.”

“Headly?”

“No one.”

“But you entrusted me with it. That makes me special.”

“You were already special,” he said gruffly.

“Don’t push me away again.”

He rubbed his face against her breasts. “I don’t want to, God knows.”

She tipped his head up. “Then why do you? The reason this time.”

Before he could speak, there was a knock on the door.

She threw a glance toward it. “Room service.”

“About bloody time.”

Another knock. “Mr. Scott?”

She sighed. “Bad bloody time, but I don’t think he’s going away.”

Dawson made to get up, but she told him to stay put. She walked the short hallway, released the bolt, and opened the door. Anticipating a room-service waiter bearing a tray, she was momentarily puzzled by the funny-looking man holding a wilting bouquet of flowers.

Which he immediately threw to the floor, leaving only a pistol in his hand. He jammed it against her ribs as he pushed her backward into the room.

She turned and cried out to Dawson. He bounded off the bed, but drew up short when Carl caught her around the throat from behind and placed the barrel of the handgun against her temple.

“Well, how about this? A little reunion with my beach friends.”

Dawson’s hands balled into fists at his sides. Enunciating each word, he said, “Let her go.”

“Now, why would I do that?”

“Because if you hurt her, I’ll kill you.”

“You’ve got it wrong. I’m killing you.” He swung the pistol away from her and aimed it at Dawson.

I
’m about done for the day. Before I sign you over to the evening shift, is there anything I can get you?”

The nurse was one of Headly’s favorites. Even so, he replied grumpily. “Cheeseburger and fries.”

“Don’t ask for what I can’t deliver. You’re still on a restricted diet.”

“He knows,” Eva said from the chair where she was thumbing through a magazine. “He’s just being ornery.”

The nurse wrapped the blood pressure cuff around his biceps. “How about some skim milk?”

“How about a stiff bourbon?”

She swatted his arm. “BP’s lowered. That’s good.” As she noted it on the chart, she asked Eva if she was staying overnight again. “That foldout can’t be comfortable.”

“It’s not bad. The patient, however, is a pain in the butt.”

“Stop talking about me like I’m not here.”

The nurse chuckled. “I know what a grouch he can be, so I think it’s sweet of you to stay with him, Mrs. Headly. In fact, your ears should have been burning earlier today.”

“Oh? Why’s that?”

“I was bragging on you.”

“To whom?”

“This little old man who was waiting on the elevator. He saw you in the hall talking to Mr. Scott and recognized him. I confess the conversation got gossipy. I told him how y’all had known Mr. Scott since birth, that he was your godson, but mostly I bragged on you for staying here in Mr. Headly’s room, taking very few breaks. Like everyone else, he was impressed.” She made one final adjustment to Headly’s IV drip. “Changed your mind about the milk?”

“No, thanks.”

“Well then, I’m out of here. Rest easy. See y’all tomorrow.”

As the door closed behind her, Eva remarked, “Sweet girl.”

“Hmm.” Headly worked his head deeper into the pillow and closed his eyes. He was more tired than he let on. A physical therapist had been in earlier doling out wisecracks, bonhomie, and sheer torture. By the time the fifteen minutes was up, Headly’s hands and arms were tingling. Which was a relief, but still.

As though reading his mind, Eva said, “You should be doing the exercises the therapist showed you.”

“Give me ten minutes’ rest.”

“He said—”

“Ten minutes and I will.”

“Gary.”

“Eva. Just because you’re the most popular girl on the third floor, don’t think you can boss me.”

“I do have my admirers, it seems.”

“A little old man? Humph. You’ve already got one.”

She sighed. “You’re right. I guess I’m stuck with you. Besides, it sounded like he was as interested in Dawson as he was in me.”

Headly was about to make a wisecrack about that when suddenly it felt as though an electrical charge had shot through him, jolting his brain and body out of lassitude. “Eva!”

She tossed her magazine aside, lunged from her chair, and was at his side in a blink. “What? Are you in pain?”

“Get her back.”

“What?”

“The nurse, get her back in here!”

She didn’t waste time on questions but dashed from the room and, within seconds, was propelling the startled young woman back through the door. Headly said, “What did he look like?”

She just gaped at him.

“The man. The little old man you were talking to about Eva and Dawson. He asked questions about them?”

She nodded, swallowed. “He recognized Mr. Scott.”

“What did he look like? Describe him.”

“He was a little old man,” she said in a helpless tone. “A cancer patient.”

To Eva, Headly said, “Get Knutz on the phone.” Going back to the nurse, he asked her the man’s approximate height and weight, age, what he’d been wearing. By the time Knutz answered, Headly had a description.

Eva held the phone to his ear as he rattled off information. “Carl’s disguised himself as a cancer patient. Shaved head. No eyebrows. Baggy clothes and a blue baseball cap. He was in the hospital, on this floor, around ten thirty or eleven this morning. Check the security cameras.”

Knutz began putting up a reasonable argument, but Headly cut him off. “Goddammit, of course it could’ve been a little old man with cancer,” he shouted. “But this is like something Carl Wingert would do, and I fucking know it was him. It
feels
like him. Yeah, yeah, I’ll hold.”

He secured the phone between his ear and shoulder and said to Eva, “Call Dawson. You have his new number?” She fished her phone from her handbag and called the number Dawson himself had programmed into her speed dial. Headly added, “Tell him to take this as a serious threat. Not to be macho and blow it off.”

The nurse was crying and wringing her hands. “If I did something wrong, I’m sorry. We were just talking.”

“Don’t be sorry,” Headly said. She was about to lose it, and he knew that if he applied the pressure he wanted to, she would probably collapse and he’d get nothing more from her. Gentling his tone, he said, “Did you get his name?”

She shook her head.

“Did he tell you where he lived?”

“No.”

“Where he was going?”

“He…he was taking flowers to a sick friend and had gotten off on the wrong floor.”

Like hell a sick friend, Headly thought. He’d been reconnoitering the hospital. “You’re doing great, sweetheart. Now, start at the beginning and tell me exactly what you said, what he said, as best as you can remember.”

She recounted the conversation in stops and starts but without folding completely. “He…I don’t know how to describe it.”

Headly pounced on her hesitancy. “Describe what? He what?”

“He perked up some when I told him that Dawson Scott was your godson. You know? Like a light came on.”

Headly shot a glance toward Eva, who was holding out her phone, looking as gut sick and every bit as fearful as Headly felt. “Straight to voice mail.”

“What a disappointment.” As Dawson spoke, he was looking into Amelia’s face, wanting it to be the last thing he saw before he died, not Carl Wingert’s gloating sneer.

But Carl didn’t pull the trigger. Dawson’s remark had piqued his curiosity just as he’d hoped it would. “Disappointment?”

Dawson shifted his gaze to the criminal. “I’m not sure you’re worth writing about, after all.”

“That’s why you went to the cabin? Hoping to get an interview with me?”

Dawson could tell the idea appealed to him. “With the famed Carl Wingert. I had to settle for an interview with Jeremy instead. Now I’m thinking maybe he was the better subject.”

“Awww. You’re hurting my feelings.”

“You’re just not that glamorous anymore, Carl. Killing me, killing Amelia. That’s your grand finale? Hate to tell you, but that’s a lame ending to your illustrious outlaw career.”

Without his white hair and bushy eyebrows to give him a benign mien, Carl’s smile was one of unmitigated evil. “Who says killing you will be my finale?”

“You think you’ll be able to shoot both of us, then waltz out of here?”

“Yep. The same way I waltzed in, while her guards were chatting up the girls working the desk. Nobody pays attention to an ailing senior citizen.”

“Clever disguise.”

“Don’t I know it.”

“But hardly razzle-dazzle.”

“I have other plans that don’t include you.”

“Hunter and Grant?” Speaking for the first time, Amelia asked tearfully, “Will you take them?”

“Hell, no. What would I want with a pair of kids?”

“But…but I thought that’s what all this was about. You and Jeremy staged his death so you could get the boys and no one would ever dream that their father had taken them.”

“That was Jeremy’s goal, not mine.”

“He’d have to love his grandsons to want them, Amelia,” Dawson said. “And he doesn’t love anybody.”

“I’ve got nothing against the boys.” He nudged Amelia. “Nothing personally against you, either.”

Dawson jumped on that. “Because her marriage to Jeremy, his faked PTSD, their divorce, were essential to the setup, right?”
Keep him talking. Keep him distracted. Stoke his ego. Pray for a miracle.

“Right. You, Amelia dear, were instrumental at several stages. But I no longer need you. Thanks to Jeremy’s deathbed confession, that white-trash cretin has been exonerated.”

Dawson said, “If all had gone well, if the cop hadn’t shot Jeremy and Willard had gone to death row, you and Jeremy would have been free to wreak havoc. Was that the plan, Carl?”

“Point’s moot.”

“Yes, but just so I’m clear, how was it going to work exactly? Your eyesight is dicey, your hips are shot. My guess is that you would have stayed in the background and thought up ways to rob, destroy, and kill while Jeremy actually did all the work and took the risks. Am I warm?”

“What risks? It was perfect,” he boasted. “No one would have suspected a dead man of, say, blowing up a bus full of troops.”

“Hmm.” Dawson nodded his understanding of the concept. “But things got royally fouled up when Jeremy got antsy, overanxious, killed Stef, and left a fingerprint. That was a major uh-oh. Suddenly Jeremy Wesson isn’t dead anymore.”

Carl said nothing to that, but Dawson could tell he’d struck a nerve. Carl’s trigger finger was twitching.

Talk fast.
“Jeremy didn’t have your smarts, Carl. He tried to be as ruthless as you, too, but in the end he developed a conscience. He died talking about his children. Lamenting the way he’d treated Amelia. With his last breath, he was crying over his mother.” Dawson watched Carl’s eyes. They remained implacable, the reptilian lids unblinking. “You killed her, didn’t you?”

“Too bad you didn’t write mysteries. You seem to have a flair for them.”

“How did she die, Carl?”

He replied querulously. “Pneumonia. If I was guessing. She had a cough that wouldn’t go away. Got worse. She was hacking up disgusting stuff. Complained of her chest hurting.”

“You wouldn’t let her get medical treatment.”

“She always had weak lungs. She’d recovered before.”

“But not this time. So you killed her.”

“I didn’t raise a hand to her. The disease killed her.”

“But you left her there, didn’t you? Left her in that cabin to die alone.”

“I had to go get supplies. I didn’t know she was going to be dead when I got back.”

“Sure you did, you gutless son of a bitch. Abandonment is your specialty. When the going gets tough, you run.”

He’d struck another nerve. Carl’s expression turned even harder, colder. And something else: defensive.

“I never left anybody who could have made it.”

“Jeremy could have. Flora could have.”

“You through?”

“One more question. Why us?”

“What?”

“Why kill us? Why aren’t you out blowing up a bus full of troops? My guess is that you’ve run out of steam. Without Jeremy, you’ve got no muscle. You’re all talk.”

“Is that your guess?” His malicious grin made Dawson’s blood run cold. “Well, you’re wrong. This is perfect. See? I kill you, I crush Headly.”

Dawson’s heart constricted. He thought,
We’re dead
, but he brazened it out. “Gary Headly? The FBI agent that Jeremy shot?”

Carl snickered at Dawson’s feigned indifference. “I thought about taking out that pretty wife of his, but that’s so predictable. Headly would expect that, which is why she’s guarded.” Again that chilling grin. “This is much better. His
godson
. I kill you, he’ll never get over it.”

“You’re right, if you kill me, Headly will grieve his heart out. But he’ll also have the last laugh on you.”

“Just for shits and giggles, what makes you think so?”

“Headly knows you inside and out, Carl.”

“I doubt it.”

“Close enough. He’s made studying you his life’s work. But to nail your character he actually needed only one day. The day before Thanksgiving 1976.”

Carl glared at him.

“Yeah, I thought that would ring a bell. Headly’s been on to you since Golden Branch. On that day, you revealed the caliber of man you are, and Headly’s opinion of you hasn’t wavered.”

“Like I care about his, or anyone’s, opinion of me.”

“How many bullets did that man take for you while you were running for your damn life?”

“He was going to die anyway.”

“We’ll never know.”

“
He
knew. He had a hole in his head, for chrissake. He volunteered to hold them off.”

“While you ran. How hard did Flora have to beg for you not to leave her and Jeremy behind?”

“I didn’t leave them though, did I?”

“But you wanted to.”

“She could barely walk. Blood all over the damn place. I had to bind her up in a sheet, and even then she left a trail.”

Like a potent narcotic, a slow rage was seeping through Dawson. He embraced it. He wanted it to saturate every cell. “During the standoff, and while you were escaping through the woods, how did you keep Jeremy from crying?”

“Doped him. Only way to shut him up.”

“You doped your son. How old was he?”

“Eleven months.”

Amelia started with surprise. Her lips parted in a silent exclamation.

Dawson registered her stunned reaction, but his gaze never flickered off Carl. “The newborn never made a sound.”

Carl snorted with contempt. “So they found it?”

“Headly did.”

“Figures.”

“When did Flora go into labor?”

“Around midnight. She was still at it when the cops showed up. It was a nasty business. Thought I was never going to get the thing out of her.”

“But you finally did.”

“Had to cram a towel in her mouth to keep her from screaming.”

“As soon as the baby was born, you stuffed it down through a hole in the floor.”

“First time I’ve thought about it since.”

His blasé dismissal of what he’d done was as shocking as the barbarous act itself.

Dawson swallowed bile and had to force himself to continue. “As they were searching the house—”

“They didn’t find me,” he said in singsong.

“But Headly found the baby in the crawl space.”

“What a frigging Boy Scout.”

“Barely alive. Still attached to the placenta.”

“You’re breaking my heart.”

“That’s when he knew you are an irredeemable sack of shit.”