Never Go Home (15 page)

She wasn’t
stopping. Neither was I. My hand went to the hem of her tank top. I lifted the
right side. I pulled my head back to see more of the tattoo. She blocked me
with her arms. A smile crossed her lips and she lifted an eyebrow.

“Not yet.”

“When?”

She shrugged.

Then both our
phones rang.

We both
exhaled, loudly.

“I have to take
that,” she said, stepping back.

“I should too,”
I said, reaching into my pocket for my phone. I answered without checking the
number, figured it was Sean.

“Jack?”

“Sasha?”

From the other
side of the room, April said, “What? What do you mean he’s not there?”

“What’s that?” Sasha
said.

“Nothing. My
brother’s wife. What’s going on? Why are you calling? It’s well after midnight
there.”

She started to
answer. I cut her off.

“Hold on a
sec.”

April’s voice
faded to a murmur in the background. I wanted privacy, though, so I went to the
back door. It was locked in three places. I managed to get them all unlatched
and stepped into the backyard. A dozen mosquitoes greeted me. They dive bombed
me, two or three at a time. I swatted them away.

“OK, Sasha.
What’s up?”

“She got a
death threat.”

Death
threat.

The phrase
echoed through my head. A scene played out in my mind where Erin had gone to
Sasha, desperate and pleading after being unable to find me. Someone had put
the pieces together. They couldn’t get to me, so they threatened her and Mia.

I don’t know if
it was the humidity or fear, but I broke out into a cold sweat. I swallowed
back the lump in my throat.

“Who?”

“Marcia
Stanton.”

My pulse
dropped below one hundred. “Credible?”

“Best I can
tell it is.”

“What was
said?”

“The gist of
it, ‘you’re dead.’”

I moved to the
corner of the small backyard and leaned against the fence. This afforded me a
view into April’s house. Our beer bottles stood next to each other on the
coffee table. I took a moment to compose my thoughts.

This wasn’t the
first time that Marcia Stanton had her life threatened. I was outside that cafe
a few days ago because we knew about the threat before she did. I had to find
out if that was the case this time.

“Did we
intercept any intel about this like the last attempt?”

“Not a word.
And we’ve been listening hard enough to hear a mouse fart.”

“Christ.” I
glanced up at the sky. Clouds raced past. “You need to get a team assembled and
put around her now.”

“That’s what I
suggested, too.”

“OK. Sounds
like you have this under control, and I wouldn’t expect any less. So, why are
you on the phone with me?”

“She wants you,
Jack. She said she needs you here and with her until this threat is
eliminated.”

“I’m
unavailable.”

I heard her
take a quick breath, as if she was going to respond. She paused for a moment.
“The funeral’s tomorrow, correct?”

“Yeah.”

“So you can
come back after that, right?”

“It’s not that
easy, Sasha.” Something caught my attention inside. I took a step to my right.
April entered the room. “There’s things here that I need to see through.”

“Like what?”

“It’s best that
you don’t know.”

“I can find
out,” she said. “You know that.”

“You don’t know
where I am.”

“Crystal River,
Florida.”

I said nothing.
Location breeched. I’d be checking over my shoulder every minute now.

“Come on, you
didn’t think all your records were destroyed, did you?”

The clouds
overhead slowed down. Like in a traffic jam, they piled into one another. Soon
the cloud would grow out of control and have nowhere to go but down.

“Give me a day,
Sasha. After that, you can send someone to pick me up and I’ll come back. Keep
Marcia underground tomorrow. If she insists on going out, get the best men you
can find. If any of the Prime Minister’s guys are off, surround her with them.”

The back door
flew open and April stepped out. She struggled to breathe.

April said,
“Jack, we need to go.”

“Hold on,” I
said to her.

“Brother’s
wife?” Sasha said.

“Something like
that,” I said.

“You’re not
going to tell me who she is?” Sasha said.

“She’s the
sheriff. We’re working on something.”

“Sure you are.
You got a thing for women in uniform, don’t you?”

“I’ll talk to
you tomorrow.” I hung up and stuffed the phone in my pocket.

April motioned
frantically. “Let’s go.”

I followed her
through the house, attempting to get her to tell me what was wrong. I feared
for Sean and his family’s safety. My chest and gut tightened, like someone had
nailed me in the solar plexus with a two-by-four.

I grabbed onto
her bare shoulder at the front door and spun her around.

I said, “What
is it?”

She said,
“Craig’s not at the house.”

“Jessie’s?”

She nodded,
ducked her shoulder and slipped out of my grasp.

“OK, and…?” I
said.

“His car is
there. The crime scene is ruined. Someone poured bleach and ammonia and hosed
it all down. There’s fresh blood, too. I think it’s Craig’s.” Her bottom lip
quivered. She bit it. Her eyes had grown wet. Tears slipped down her cheeks.

“Listen to me,
April. Go change. You don’t need your uniform, but throw on some jeans and grab
your pistol. We’re going to head over there, quickly, but calmly. We’ll figure
out what’s going on. But let’s wait until we see this with our own eyes before
we start making assumptions. OK?”

“OK.” She wiped
her eyes with the back of her hand.

She disappeared
down the dark hall. When she returned, she had on faded blue jeans. They had
holes in the knees. We left the house and walked to the car, side-by-side. Our
hands brushed against each other. Thunder rumbled. It sounded far away. No
flash accompanied it.

We got in the
car. She drove. On the way, she asked, “Who called you?”

“Lady I’m
working with.”

“Everything
OK?”

“Typical
problems at the office,” I said. “Looks like I’ll have to return after
tomorrow.”

“Oh.” Her lips
went to one side of her face and she glanced at me. “Will you come back?”

I shrugged.
“There’s no way I can give an honest answer to that question. I could tell you
yes, but I’d be lying. I could say no, and show up a week from tomorrow.”

“I can’t
believe I waited almost twenty years to see you again and it had to be like
this.”

I said nothing.
What could I say? I’d forgotten about her after a week of getting my butt
kicked in recruit training. She’d grown up with a distorted memory of me, and
built me up from that. I could tell her everything about me, everything I had done,
and she’d dismiss it because in some part of her brain, she thought of me as
some kind of hero.

“I’m not who
you think I am,” I said.

“What?” she
said.

“This image you
have of me, it’s not who I am. April, I’m not a good man.”

“Don’t say
that.”

“It’s true.
Trust me. The best thing you can do is forget all about me.”

She shook her
head. “There’s too much going on right now, Jack. Can we talk about this before
you go?”

I sighed,
looked out the window. Beyond the road I saw nothing but black. The gulf lay a
couple hundred yards away. Crystal blue water as far as you could swim. I
wanted to be out there more than I wanted to be in the car.

“Jack?”

“Sure.”

We reached
Jessie’s neighborhood. Red and blue lights bounced across the sky. Craig’s
cruiser was parked on the street, in front of the house, right where I’d last
seen it. Another one of April’s deputies had pulled into the driveway and left
his strobes running.

She slammed on
the brakes and threw the car into park before coming to a complete stop. The car
lurched forward and jerked back. She threw open her door and jumped out. I
followed. We ran to the front of the house where her deputy waited.

“What’s going
on, Skagen?” she said.

The man stepped
forward. “He’s gone. No answer. Nothing. There’s a mess inside. Fresh blood in
the kitchen, living room, and the garage.”

I scanned the
area while the man spoke. Across the street I saw the faint glow of a cigarette
behind the front window.

“Jack,” April
said. “Coming in with me?”

“You go ahead.
I want to check something out.”

She and Skagen
walked inside. I crossed the street and cut across the neighbor’s lawn to their
front door. I didn’t bother with knocking. I reached for the handle, found it
unlocked, and pushed it open.

The guy dropped
his cigarette and hurried backward to the wall.

“What are you
doing?” he said.

“What’d you
see?” I said.

“Huh?”

Every time I’d
been there, the guy had been watching, whether from the porch, or inside. He
saw what happened to Craig.

“That’s a nasty
habit you got there,” I said.

“So,” he said.

“It’ll kill
you.”

He said
nothing.

I walked toward
him, stepped on the cigarette and put it out. The man’s breathing grew wheezy.
I reached behind my back and pulled out the M40.

“When I say
kill you, I don’t mean in the sense of heart disease and lung cancer. I mean
it’ll get you noticed by the wrong person at the wrong time.”

“Don’t shoot
me, man.”

His dark eyes
focused on the M40’s barrel. He sucked in breath and blew it out in under a
second. I caught the odor of whiskey. The guy was frail, his hair was gray and
thin. He hadn’t shaved in a week or two. Long lonely hairs poked out from his
open shirt.

“Where’s the
other person?”

“What? Who?”

“Don’t screw
with me, man. I saw someone on the porch with you earlier.”

“She…she’s in
bed.”

“If you’re
lying, she’s dead.”

“I’m not
lying,” he said.

“Tell me what
you saw.”

“Get that gun
out of my face.” He whispered the words.

I took a step
back and lowered my weapon.

The guy took a
few deep breaths. He patted his chest a few times. “OK, after you and the woman
left earlier, this black guy, he came walking over from down the street that
way.” The man extended his arm and pointed over my shoulder. “The other cop,
well, he talked to him, then turned his back on him.”

“What do you
mean by that?”

“It was as if
he recognized him, or accepted him as belonging there. The cop turned and waved
the guy forward.”

“OK.”

“They was
inside for a while.” He pursed his lips and blew out quickly. It sounded like
faint machine gun fire. “I started to get bored. Figured I might come in and
watch some television. Gotta be a game on, at least. Right?”

“Of course.”

“Then I seen
that black dude come running out of the house, down the street again. He pulled
back up a couple seconds later in a beat up little car.”

“What kind of car?”

The guy
shrugged.

“Maybe like an
old Toyota?” I said.

“Could’ve
been,” he said.

“You get the
color of it?”

The guy shook
his head and tapped his nose. “Maybe gray.”

“OK.”

“Anyway,” he
said. “He gets out, pops the trunk, opens the garage, and then puts the cop in
the trunk.”

I waited a
beat. “Did you call the police?”

The guy shook
his head. “No, sir. I didn’t know who else might have been out there. I’ve been
called a snitch before. Been beaten ‘cause of it, man.”

“What’s your
name?”

The guy said
nothing.

“We can get it
through other means.”

He looked
toward the window. “Your girlfriend’s out there.”

“Your name,” I
said.

“Fults,” he
said. “Herman Fults, with an
ess
, not a
zee
.”

“Don’t make any
plans to leave town, Herman.”

He nodded.
“That all?”

“No, I’ve got
one more question.”

“Can I get a
drink first?” He turned and walked toward the kitchen without waiting for my
response. “Come on, man.”

I followed him.
He grabbed a bottle of Wild Turkey, tossed the cap and started drinking.

“Have a seat,”
he said.

I sat across
from him. My seat felt unsteady, and the table wobbled.

“You want to
know what happened to Ms. Jess, don’t you?”

I nodded. “Did
you see?”

Under the
kitchen light, he looked like a different man. Not in a good way, either. The
man in the living room was old and frail. This looked like that guy’s deceased
father. Deep lines were etched into his face. What hair he had looked brittle.
His skin was gray, and his eyes were glazed over and milky.

“She was home
with her husband. The kids was out. I was watching the game. Heard a loud
engine pull up, so I got up and went to the window, cracked it and had a smoke.
Two big guys got out and went right inside the house.”

“Had you seen
them before?”

“Tubby and
Tubby Jr.? Oh, sure. They were over a lot. Ms. Jess told me she hated them. One
was her husband’s brother.”

I said nothing.

“So, anyway,
nothing seemed out of the ordinary. I went back to my game. Fell asleep. My
front door was open, just the screen there. Windows, too. Nice breeze that
night blew directly into my house. And then, two explosions woke me up.”

I straightened
up.

“What time did
that happen?”

He looked up.
“Maybe around one or two.”

“How long
between the explosions?”

“Not long.
Couple of seconds.”