The Reckoning (12 page)

He looked up at Twyla, calmed himself. “The kid had an iPhone. He took pictures.”

Twyla took that in, her expression calm. “Then I'll have to go get it, won't I?”

Coker shook his head. “Don't bother. Won't matter.”

“Why not?”

“It was an iPhone, Twyla. Think about it.”

She did. “Oh, shit. Photo Stream. Whatever shots you take, they go right into Photo Stream.”

“And then into the fucking Cloud. And from there into every other Apple machine he's got.”

Twyla stood up, watched the stick figure stumble up the steps of the Kellerman place. “There's more,” she said, turning to him.

“More?” said Coker, straightening up.

“Yeah. It's called Photo Stream Sharing.”

“Sharing? And that means?”

“That if he shares his Photo Stream with his friends, any shot that goes onto
his
Photo Stream will automatically turn up on everybody else's phone. Basically they'll go…everywhere.”

Coker was looking down at the two boys, Nate still keening in pain, the other kid out cold.

“Define
everywhere
, Twyla.”

“Social media. Facebook. Instagram.”

“Fuck me,” said Coker. “Fuck me blue.”

Twyla started to laugh, a hard edge in it. “Do we have time?”

Nick had bloody awful dreams that he managed not to recall when he woke up to a Saturday morning in his own bed, sunlight streaming in through the gauzy bedroom drapes, the sound of swifts and skylarks in the branches of the live oaks outside his window, the dreams leaving only a low-level sense of crawling dread, which dissipated quickly as he came fully awake.

Kate was already up and gone to her office; she had a tricky custodial care hearing on Monday morning and had to prepare for it. He had been dimly aware of her moving around the room, getting dressed, trying not to disturb him.

He could smell breakfast cooking, coffee and bacon and eggs, and the sound of kids chattering came up the stairs, and Eufaula's voice carrying above the din, a calm competent woodwind tone in a Tidewater accent, something about not waking Nick.

Nick shaved, showered, did some push-ups off the end of the bed, making it a point not to think about the Thorssons or the Morrisons or anything work-related as he pumped out a quick one hundred, feeling his body moving, feeling a pleasant burn in his chest and shoulders.

When he got down to the kitchen he stood in the doorway, unnoticed, watching the kids around the big white table in the breakfast nook, part of him wondering where the word
nook
came from, the rest of him enjoying the domestic scene.

The kids were all gathered around the table, Rainey at his favorite spot on the end, a handsome kid—a lady-killer someday. Not so small anymore, he was filling out fast, losing the belly softness, getting shoulders and arms. He had silky blond hair that hung down to his shoulders, large expressive eyes of cornflower blue, a quick wit, maybe a touch sly, capable of cunning, but then, as Kate said, so were most kids.

Rainey didn't see Nick at the door and was gently teasing Hannah, a sweet-natured kid, white blond curls and huge blue eyes and a slightly demented sense of humor. Axel, looking on, was a thin wiry boy with shaggy brown hair that hung down in his eyes—long hair was the thing now for school-age boys.

Axel had big brown eyes that reminded Nick of a Disney rabbit—a sensitive kid, smart, but with a bruised quality that came from being the son of an abusive prick like Byron Deitz.

Nick liked the kid. If he'd been inclined to favorites, he'd have favored Axel, but he worked hard to resist that tendency. Axel had grace and style and a brave heart. Nick watched him watching Rainey wind Hannah up, thinking about older brothers and hero worship, and then about the social worker Alice Bayer, a thought he had pretty often when he looked at Rainey. So there was some ugly history between Nick and Rainey, and negotiating around it in a civil manner was a daily dance for both of them.

Eufaula saw him first and called out a cheerful good morning, and the kids, descending into mayhem, up to their ears in pancakes and maple syrup—not a pretty sight—chirped and hooted at him like a roost of brainless budgies.

Eufaula was their live-in housekeeper, a young woman training for dance, tall and graceful, a lithe and curvy body and the sculptural head of an Ibo River carving. Heart-attack beautiful, she was engaged to a cadet second class at the Virginia Military Institute, the same school where Kate's father Dillon had been a faculty member.

She was wearing a whole-body leotard in black, bright red ballet flats, a Liberty headscarf that Kate had given her, all reds and golds, and a scarlet apron. She was a pleasure to behold, as always. She came over. “Nick, how did you sleep?”

“Like a stone, thanks, Eufaula. And you?”

“Kate and I stayed up waiting for you. I went to bed at three. She says you didn't get in until four. You must be beat. I have coffee.”

Nick took the coffee, served in a delicate bone china cup—Eufaula hated mugs—and he sipped at it as he leaned against the wall, waiting for the kids to finish their breakfast.

He tried never to sit down at a table where little kids were eating. It was like trying to eat beside a juice blender without the lid on. You came away stuccoed with sticky.

Eufaula was doing what Nick could only call a swirl: moving around the breakfast table, crossing the checkerboard kitchen floor, picking up this, moving that, setting other plates down, biscuits and jam, glasses of orange juice, floating over the chaos of the children, always moving, always in control, now and then sending him a flashing smile.

She had reacted with a cool and easygoing efficiency to the sudden arrival of three children and a newly made widow in a household that had been, up until recently, two adults who were hardly ever home. In short, Eufaula had become indispensable, and they paid her accordingly and treated her with respect. When she had slowed down enough to have a coffee of her own, Nick asked her where Beth was.

“Gone down to Cap City, to talk to Agent Hackendorff and the FBI lawyers about Mr. Deitz's estate.”

“Kate was saying. Good news for her.”

Eufaula sipped at her coffee and Nick got the impression she was framing a tactical answer. Nick noticed the quick glance at Rainey.

“It is. She's talking about buying something around here, but maybe she'll end up in Cap City, where her work is. Be easier for her, no commute.”

Nick led her a bit. “Axel would miss Rainey. They're pretty tight.”

“They'd still be family. See each other on holidays, like cousins do. Axel could use some friends his own age.” She glanced up at Nick over her coffee cup. “Sometimes Rainey can lead Axel on some. Rainey has the devil in him, I think.”

Somehow, over the din, Rainey heard his name and he looked up at them both, and that veiled look that he sometimes got flashed over his bright young face, as if he knew their thoughts and didn't like them, but then Hannah stole his pancake and he was all kid again.

Nick had long suspected that Eufaula wasn't a complete fan of Rainey's, but they had never talked about it, and they weren't going to right now either. It was forbidden ground in Kate's house, and they both knew it.

They exchanged a look that was full of tacit understanding, and Nick felt better knowing that there was someone else in the house who was keeping an eye on Rainey and on his influence with Axel.

They were schoolmates at Regiopolis, walked there and back every day, and were out and about the neighborhood on their bikes every weekend. Nick thought it was unusual for Rainey to spend most of his time with a boy almost four years younger.

Other than Axel, Rainey had not made friends at Regiopolis Prep, an ivy-covered Romanesque mansion on a huge forested estate in the heart of Old Niceville. It was a Roman Catholic school run with cheerful efficiency by the Jesuits, where the main events of the week were Punishment Parade on Monday morning, Benediction and Confession on Saturday afternoon, and High Mass on Sunday at eleven, followed by a football game at two.

Rainey was talking about trying out for the Bantam squad, and Nick hoped he'd make it. Playing football was good for the soul. Nick had been a pretty effective middle linebacker for the Citadel Bulldogs, and he felt that if Rainey could make the squad, it would give them something to bond over.

He was supposed to be running Rainey and Axel through some drills this afternoon, except that he wasn't going to be able to, thanks to whatever the hell had massacred the Morrison family last night. He went over to the table, ruffled some hair, kissed Hannah on top of her head, and told the boys he was sorry, but he wasn't going to be able to take them out for football practice today.

“We know,” said Rainey, slurping his OJ. “Kate told us you were on this really bad case.”

“Yeah,” said Axel, savoring it. “We hear it was like this awful massacre, like the Indians did to General Custer.”

“Custer?” said Nick. “Don't tell me you're studying the Battle of the Little Bighorn in grade four?”

“I'm in grade five, Uncle Nick!”

“You can't be. You're only nine.”

“He's ten,” Rainey said, smiling up at him. “He turned ten a month ago.”

Axel was hot on the massacre theme. “So was it like awful and stuff?” he wanted to know. Rainey looked equally avid for details. Hannah was wiping her syrupy fingers on her dress and singing a song that could have been about polka dots and moonbeams.

“If you mean the Battle of the Little Bighorn, yes, it was.”

“No,” said Rainey. “We mean the case you're on. Was it real bad? Tell us something gross!”

Nick looked at both boys, wondering about them, what was in their heads, was this typical, or was he just an idiot, but Eufaula was right there.

“None of your business what it was like,” she said, going to work on Hannah with a Handi Wipe. “Pay no attention to these horrible little boys, Nick. You have a call waiting in your office.”

Nick checked his watch, five to ten. It should be Mavis Crossfire. It was. “We've got a line on a car—”

“From the red-light camera?”

“How'd you know?”

“I checked my computer before I went to bed. Beau posted it to the case file.”

“What time was that?”

“Past five. Kate was up. She had mint juleps ready.”

“At five in the morning? You do
not
deserve that woman.”

“I know that. Where are you?”

“On my way to your house. About nine minutes away. Did you talk to Beau Norlett about the book, running all the case evidence?”

“Yeah. He's at the HQ with Tig right now, compiling all the notes, Riley's CSI report, getting it all into the computer, working out an assignment sheet. He says he's already heard from Chief Keebles about getting some of your NPD people on the case.”

“We have five, pulled from Vice and Domestics, two from Bicycle Patrol—”

“Jeez, not those pathetic weenies in their latex bike shorts and those stupid helmets?”

“They're not going to wear their Bicycle Patrol outfits on this case, okay?”

“Good. I mean, what kind of loser cop lets himself get assigned to
bicycles
anyway? Only thing weenier than that is a mall cop on a Segway.”

“Thank you for the career advisory. I'll treasure it always. We did a canvass of the neighborhood again this morning—”

“The security cameras?”

“Yes. You were right. A whole bunch of cameras. It's going to take a while to go through them, and some of them store their video records in the Cloud, so that's gotta be pulled out.”

“Warrants?”

“So far everybody's cooperating. They'd all like to see whatever got at the Morrisons get taken off the streets. Another thing. Frank Barbetta ran down that red Mercedes AMG coupe last night.”

“Outstanding. Good for him.”

“There was a bit of a chase. That's a damn fleet machine. It led our squad cars all the way past Mauldar Field. Guess who finally hooked it?”

“No idea.”

“Your brother-in-law.”

Reed Walker, Kate's younger brother, drove a high-speed Police Interceptor for the Highway Patrol. The muscled-up Ford cruiser looked like a Doberman on steroids.

But then so did Reed, so maybe he and his car belonged together.

“How did he get pulled in?”

“He was on the night shift. He heard it on the tactical channel, dropped down the side roads, and picked up the pursuit out by Charlie Danziger's place. Benz wasn't so fast on those gravel roads up there, and the driver was a chump. Reed got up close, they were doing one-twenty, Reed bumped it with his grill bars. The Benz went ballistic, rolled and tumbled and ended up in a culvert.”

“Who was in it?”

“Two gangbangers, ZeeZee Boys. One male DATS, one female helivaced and critical at Sorrows.”

“Conscious?”

“Not yet.”

“I'm going to want to talk to her.”

“Fifty-fifty. We'll see. Got Boots Jackson in the CCU with her. She comes around, we'll know.”

“Yeah. Okay. Where do want to start this?”

“I thought you and me would go down to the Pavilion and talk to Glynda Yarvik.”

“Polish babe, serious front porch on her, big blond hair looks like whipped cream, hips like a Cape buffalo, runs the Bar Belle?”

The Bar Belle was a high-end riverside bar and restaurant, part of a series of expensive shops and fern bars built on a quarter mile of cantilevered cedar-planked platform that jutted out over the west bank of the Tulip about a mile south of Patton's Hard.

“That's her. Remind me not to ask you to recap what I look like in a single sentence. That car that ran the red-light camera at Lanai Lane and River Road came back as a 1975 Cadillac Fleetwood, plate number Alpha Romeo 2987 Zebra, registered to a Maris Yarvik. He's the guy that owns Yarvik GM over on Powder Springs. Glynda called Central this morning, saying that he's been off the grid since Friday afternoon. So I think we—”

Nick heard a horn blasting and a soft curse from Mavis, and then she was back.

“Sorry, guy cut me off and then he gives the finger and points to my cell phone.”

“You're not on the hands-free?”

“I'm in a 2010 GMC Suburban that is painted bright shiny black. It has
Niceville Police Department
painted in big gold letters along the back and sides, and a big old roof rack loaded with police lights.”

“Civilians suck. How far away are you now?”

“Turning the corner by South Gwinnett and Beauregard.”

“I'll be on the porch.”

Eufaula was at the window in the living room when Mavis Crossfire pulled up in her big black Suburban. Nick saw her standing there as he climbed in, gave her a wave, and she waved back. Sighing, she turned away from the window and went back down the hallway, past the cedar-lined dining room with the Gallé glass chandelier that Lenore Walker had brought home from Paris the year before she died. Axel and Hannah were scurrying around, putting dishes in the dishwasher, tidying up.