Lethal (25 page)

But that was an issue for another day. Today, they had to deal with one much more pressing. “What about tucking Emily in?” she asked.

“She always sleeps with two things.”

“Her bankie and Elmo.”

“They weren’t in her bed this morning.” While Tori processed that, he continued. “They weren’t in Honor’s bed either. I didn’t see them anywhere.”

“A kidnapper who let Em take her bedtime pals along? Hmm.” She thought back to Doral’s insinuation that the
supposed kidnapping might not have been that at all. What was Honor into?

As though reading her mind, Stan said, “I believe in keeping confidences.”

She didn’t touch that.

“I know how close Honor is to you. I don’t understand the friendship. I don’t approve of it. But I respect it.”

“Okay.”

“But these are critical circumstances, Victoria.”

His use of her full name underscored how critical the circumstances were. As if she needed him to emphasize that to her.

“If Honor has confided to you—”

“That she’s involved with a man named Lee Coburn? Is that what you’re waltzing around? Save the dance steps, Stan. The answer is no. Honor doesn’t confide in me every thought and feeling she has, but I think I would know if she was seeing someone. Hell, I’d be celebrating it. But if she knew this man at all, I swear to you that I’m unaware of it.”

He received her answer with characteristic stoicism. He coughed behind his fist, indicating to her that there was more on his mind. “Crawford asked Doral a lot of questions about Eddie. Crawford seems to be working under the delusion that there’s a link to him in all this.”

“I guess that explains why Doral asked me about it.”

“What did Doral ask you?”

“If Honor had recently revealed a secret about Eddie.” She shrugged. “I accused him of being high.”

“Then there’s no such secret?”

She gaped at him for several seconds, then looked around her familiar living room, almost expecting to see writing on the walls that would explain to her why everyone seemed to have lost their minds. When she came back
to him, she said, “Stan, I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“I won’t tolerate any negative implications about my son.”

“The deputy’s implications were negative?”

“Not precisely. But it sounds to me as though he’s trying to draw a connection between Eddie and what happened at Sam Marset’s warehouse on Sunday night. That’s preposterous. I don’t know why Coburn sought out Honor and turned her house upside down, but both he and Crawford are mistaken if they think Eddie was involved in anything…”

Tori supplied the word he couldn’t bring himself to speak. “Illegal.” She waited; Stan said nothing. “I agree with you. Eddie was a Boy Scout, a model citizen, an honest cop. So what are you worried about?”

“I’m not.”

“Could’ve fooled me.” She folded her arms beneath her breasts and assessed him closely. “A team of wild horses couldn’t have dragged you into the home of the scarlet woman of Tambour. But here you are in my den of iniquity asking questions that make no sense to me, but obviously do to you. And to Doral.”

He remained stubbornly tight-lipped.

She continued. “Doral’s brother was killed this morning. Your daughter-in-law and grandchild are missing. Yet this alleged secret, involving a man who’s been dead for over two years, has got the two of you barging in on me when you should be out there overturning every stone in search of my friend and her little girl. What gives, Stan?”

Without a word, he strode to the front door and opened it.

“Wait!” She joined him at the threshold. The look he
gave her would curdle milk. She didn’t back down from it, but she moderated her tone. “I don’t give a rat’s ass what you think of me. In fact, I rather enjoy ruffling your American eagle feathers. But I love Honor. I love Emily. I want them back, whole and sound and safe.”

He remained rigid and unmoved, but he didn’t storm out.

Still speaking in a quiet, reasonable tone, she continued. “Just so you know, I’ve made arrangements to have a large sum of cash available if and when you get a ransom demand. Don’t be stubborn and proud, Stan. Don’t be a priggish idiot. Nobody has to know that the money came from my whoring hands. Let me do this. Not for you. For them.”

He remained as taciturn as ever, but he said, “Thank you. I’ll let you know.”

H
onor’s eyes remained fixed on Coburn as the man on the telephone repeated to her how dangerous he was. When she didn’t respond, Hamilton prompted her. “Mrs. Gillette?”

“Yes,” she said hoarsely, “I… I’m listening.”

“Coburn is lethal. He’s been trained to be. But the fact that he abducted you instead of killing you—”

“He didn’t abduct me, Mr. Hamilton. I came with him voluntarily.”

Several seconds ticked by before Hamilton said anything. Then he cleared his throat and politely asked if Coburn was treating Emily and her well.

She thought of his threats, real and implied, and the strong-arming, and the battle royal over possession of the pistol, but she also remembered his snatching up Emily’s bankie and Elmo as they fled the house. She thought of his taking a chance on being captured to buy them food and water.

And she thought of his coming back rather than deserting them.

She said to Hamilton, “We’re all right.”

“I’m glad to hear it. Put Coburn back on.”

She passed the phone to him. He said into it, “Talk to me.”

“You first.”

He talked Hamilton through the mass shooting and everything that had transpired since. He was concise and ended by saying, “I had no choice but to get her and the kid out of there. They’d be dead if I hadn’t.”

“You’re certain that this policeman you killed was Sam Marset’s assassin.”

“I saw him do it.”

“Along with his twin.”

“Correct.”

Hamilton took a deep breath and expelled it loudly. “Okay. Except for the warehouse killer’s identity, and the misconception that Mrs. Gillette was kidnapped, that matches everything Tom VanAllen told me.”

“Tom VanAllen. Who’s VanAllen?”

“My successor down there.”

“When did you talk to him?”

“When it became apparent that you’d kicked up a shit storm.”

“You talked to this VanAllen before taking my call?”

“I wanted to get a feel for the situation from his perspective. I wanted it unfiltered. I even asked him if you were an agent from his office working undercover.”

“Gee, you’re a stitch.”

“I needed to know what he knew or suspected.”

“I’m kinda interested in that myself.”

“As far as local law enforcement is concerned, you’re
a friendless dock worker who went postal and shot up the place. That’s good. Now that I’ve talked to you, I’ll admit to VanAllen that I tricked him in order to get his unbiased assessment, and then I’ll enlist him to help bring you and Mrs. Gillette in. Once you, she, and the child are safe, we’ll figure out how to go in and mop up.”

Coburn frowned, pulled at his lower lip with his teeth, and looked hard at Honor. Finally, he said, “Negative.”

“Excuse me?”

“Negative. I don’t want to come in yet.”

“Don’t worry about your cover. It will remain intact. The official word will be that you died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound during a standoff with federal agents. We’ll make arrests based on the intel you’ve gathered so far, but no one will know where it came from. You’ll be reassigned to another part of the country, and no one will be the wiser.”

“Sounds swell. Except that I haven’t finished the job here.”

“You’ve done well, Coburn,” Hamilton argued. “You’re getting out alive, which is no small accomplishment. And you’ve fingered some key people in The Bookkeeper’s organization. I’ve got men from San Antonio to key points east, all the way to the Mississippi/Alabama line, standing by to make arrests, soon as I give them the green light. You took out one of The Bookkeeper’s main facilitators this morning.”

“But we don’t have The Bookkeeper.”

“I’m satisfied.”

“I’m not. Something big is about to happen. I want to put him out of commission before it does.”

“Something big, like what?”

“A new client. A Mexican cartel would be my guess. I think that’s why Sam Marset was bumped. He was whining
over a couple of his trucks getting stopped and searched. Those two weren’t hauling anything except potting soil, but it spooked Marset, because he was guaranteed that none of his trucks would be subject to search. The Bookkeeper wanted to shut him up. He doesn’t need a complaint department at any time, but especially not now.”

Hamilton considered it, then said, “But the new alliance isn’t a sure thing.”

“It’s pending.”

“Can you identify the cartel?”

“No. My time ran out Sunday night.”

Again Hamilton took several moments to mull it over. Coburn watched Honor watching him.

Finally Hamilton said, “We’ll go with what we’ve got. With or without this pending arrangement, you’ve built a case. It’s enough.”

“That’s bullshit, and you know it. No federal prosecutor is going to touch this unless he’s got a smoking gun or an eyewitness who’ll swear his life away to see justice done, and no one is going to do that even if he’s guaranteed a new identity in Outer Mongolia, because everybody’s scared shitless of The Bookkeeper.

“It would also be a P.R. nightmare for the bureau. Sam Marset is just a name to you, but in these parts he was looked upon as a saint. Drag his name through the mud without absolute proof of his corruption, make charges that won’t stick, and all you’ll do is cause resentment among the law-abiding population and put the offenders on red alert.

“Then the DEA will get pissed off and blame us for sending every dealer underground. Same with the ATF, Customs and Border Protection, Homeland Security. Everybody will get skittish and back off stings they had planned,
and we’ll all slink back to square one with nothing but our dicks in our hands.

“If you bring me in now, that’s what will happen. After a week or so, when things have cooled down, the smugglers will return to supplying their customers. They’ll go on killing each other, plus a few innocent bystanders now and then whenever a deal goes south, and those casualties will be on your head, and on mine for not finishing my job.”

Hamilton waited several beats, then said, “Bravo, Coburn. That was a very impassioned speech, and I hear you.” He paused again. “Okay. You stay. But as good as you are, you can’t clean this up by yourself, especially now that you’re a suspected mass murderer. Badges down there would love to get in their target practice on you. You’ll need backup. VanAllen will provide it.”

“Nix. The Bookkeeper has informers in every police department, sheriff’s office, city hall, and courthouse. Every-freaking-body is on the take.”

“You’re saying you think VanAllen—”

“I’m saying give me forty-eight hours.”

“You can’t be serious.”

“All right, thirty-six.”

“What for?”

Coburn focused more sharply on Honor. “I’m on to something that could blow the top off.”

“What is it?”

“I can’t say.”

“Can’t or won’t?”

“You pick.”

“Shit.”

Honor could sense Hamilton’s frustration. Through the phone, she heard him blow out another gust of breath.

Finally he said, “This
something
involves Mrs. Gillette, doesn’t it?”

Coburn said nothing.

“I’m not a rookie either, Coburn,” Hamilton said. “You don’t really expect me to believe that you chose her house, out of all the houses in coastal Louisiana, to hide in, and that while you were there, you just up and decided to ransack the place. You can’t expect me to believe that without some über-strong motivating factor she came with you of her own free will after watching you fatally shoot a family friend in her living room.

“And you certainly can’t expect me to believe that you, of all people, have taken a widow and child under your wing out of the goodness of your heart, when it has come under debate many times whether or not you even possess a heart.”