The Reckoning (6 page)

A ten-forty-three was a murder reported. Barbetta had everyone's full attention.

“Where?”

“One three two nine Palisade Drive. The Glades. Multiple vics. Tell Nick, Tig is saying it looks just like the Thorsson killings.”

Barbetta turned to say something to Nick, but he was already moving. Lacy hesitated, caught up in the chase, but torn.

Nick stopped and looked at her, leaving it up to her.

Finally she shook her head. “No. I gotta stay with the body. He was my client. He went wrong, but he started out good. I owe it to his family.”

Nick looked down at Dutrow's dead face, glanced across the stone slab that had cut him in half, came back to Lacy.

“You're a true heart, Lacy, and I admire that. But there's only one good thing you can say about Jordan Dutrow, and we all know what it is.”

More sirens, and flashing red and blue lights flickering all over his ceiling. Danziger sighed, swore, and got the hell out of bed. He reached the window in time to see a big black Chevy Suburban with Niceville PD markings racing north on the Mile, lights and sirens, followed closely by a navy blue Crown Vic with its strobes on. He looked at the clock on the bedside table: 2:17.

This now officially qualified as a lousy fucking night. He got up, looked at the bottle of pinot on the dresser, and decided that the last thing he needed right now was more wine.

What he needed was coffee—strong, black, and lots of it—and he was pretty sure the MountRoyal did not do room service.

He got dressed—the usual jeans, blue cowboy boots. As he was pulling the boots on something shimmered in his memory pool; he reached for it but it was gone like a fish in a stream. Got a fresh white shirt out of the closet, checked his face in the mirror while he was buttoning it up—yes, he was visible in the mirror, so there was that, anyway. He pulled his range jacket off the hanger, felt the weight of it, patted it, and pulled out a Colt Anaconda revolver.

It was fully loaded, and the sheen of rigorous maintenance rippled over the steel. It felt real fine in his hand, as familiar as his navy blue boots. As he hefted it another memory fish shimmered in that pool, but this one he caught.

An old barn deep in a forest, holes in the roof and sunlight streaming down sideways through a haze of straw dust…antique tin signs all over for White Rose Gasoline and Virginia Sweet Leaf Tobacco and a blue sign shaped like an owl that says Wise Potato Chips…the smell of bat shit and old wood and motor oil…he's sitting on an oil drum or something…there's another guy in the barn with him—hard-looking younger guy with a flame-scar on the side of his neck…it feels like they're waiting for something…then the cell phone rings and he picks it up…it's Coker on the other end…he listens to Coker talk for a while…hangs up, and says to the guy with him…go look outside, see if there's someone coming…the guy gets up and goes to look through the cracks in the barn board—Merle Zane, that's the guy's name—and while Merle Zane has his back turned, Danziger takes out a pistol and shoots him in the back…guy slams into the barn board—breaks through and goes down on his back…comes up with a nine-mill and starts firing back through the boarding…holes punching through…gunfire echoing all around…he's firing back at Merle…and he feels a round thump into his chest…last he sees is Merle Zane with a bullet hole in his back running off into a big pine forest…but the main thing here is there's a hole in his own chest and Jesus Christ, it stings like a bitch…

He touched the sore spot on his chest. Felt sort of like it could be from getting shot, but why did he have two of them?

Okay. Anyway, two clues here. Merle Zane and a barn in the woods, a really old barn that stinks of bat shit and motor oil.

So maybe a garage? Out in the country?

That would have to be the Belfair Pike General Store and Saddlery. Route 311, couple miles into the Belfair Range, down a rutted lane that leads into the forest, maybe a half mile in.

Was that where it happened?

Something to work with.

So why did Coker want me to shoot a guy in the back? That's not a Coker thing at all. Coker likes to kill people—I mean, who doesn't? But he likes to see the expression on their faces while he does it. That's why he was a good police sniper.

Questions are multiplying here.

So go out and get some answers.

Danziger gathered his stuff together and went out the door, feeling that maybe some progress was being made here, that he had a mission to accomplish, which was to stitch himself back into a complete person with all his memories intact, right up to how he ended up in the MountRoyal Hotel on a rainy night in Niceville with no idea who the hell he was. First thing to do, go find Coker and have a chat.

No,
first
thing, get a coffee.

It wasn't hard to find 1329 Palisade Drive, because you could see the flashing lights of the emergency vehicles arcing across the low-lying cloud cover. Nick followed Mavis Crossfire's big black Suburban around a shady curve that ended in the intersection of Palisade and Flamingo Way. The Morrison house was right there, lit up by the strobes of six or seven Niceville black-and-whites. There was also an EMT ambulance parked a little way down, the techs sitting in the cab drinking coffee: nobody alive in the house, nothing to do but write it up and wait for another call. The rain had fallen away to a pale descending mist floating in the air. It gave everything a soft-focus look and bleached out all the colors, so the scene looked like an old black-and-white movie.

Harness cops were milling about, and they had set up a yellow-tape cordon to keep the neighbors—all of whom seemed to be up and watching from their lawns and porches—at a distance.

There was an old Mercedes-Benz 600, dark green and big as a tank, parked more or less in the middle of Palisade Drive, a huge black man in a long blue trench coat over a charcoal gray suit, pale gray shirt, and scarlet tie, standing by it and talking into his cell phone. They both pulled up, Mavis in the Suburban and Nick in his Crown Vic, and the big guy shut his phone down, scowling a bit as he waited for Mavis and Nick to get out of their rides.

“Nick, Mavis.”

“Tig,” said Mavis, snapping open an umbrella as big as a bivouac tent and holding it over them.

Tyree “Tig” Sutter, the CO of the Belfair and Cullen County Criminal Investigation Division, was a plus-size barrel of bone and muscle with a voice that should have been coming out of a pagan idol. He shook his head, drops of water running down his shaved skull, glancing at Nick, giving him a quick smile before his face went back to grim.

“I hear you two settled the Thorsson thing.”

Mavis shook her head. “I was just a bystander. Lacy Steinert and Nick here ran it down.”

“Kid's dead, right?” said Tig.

“Hard to get any deader,” said Nick.

“I heard a cave-in?”

“Looks like,” said Mavis.

“So what do we have? A dying declaration?”

Nick filled him in on the essentials, leaving out the bullshit about the voices in his head making him do it. Mavis, who hadn't heard any of that, agreed with the basics. Tig took it in.

“Man. Nothing on Dutrow's sheet adds up to that scene at the Thorssons. Lacy Steinert have anything to say about it?”

“Yeah. She saw him last Monday, said he was a bit ragged but seemed okay. His team played Sacred Heart on Sunday—beat them pretty soundly and he made MVP. He did complain about migraines.”

Tig cocked his head. “Migraines? So maybe a head thing?”

“Maybe,” said Nick. “We better get the ME to look for aneurysms, any kind of neural damage.”

“Toxicology too,” said Mavis. “He was a lifter, so maybe something steroidal?”

“I'll see they do that,” said Tig. “Nice work, Nick.”

“Trail was a mile wide,” he said.

“Maybe. But good work anyway. Mavis, are you in on this thing here?”

“Up to you,” she said. “CID ranks on multiple homicides, but I'd like to ride along for a while.”

Tig looked at her. “You're not gonna enjoy it.”

Mavis tilted her head, gave him a thin smile.

“You've been inside?” Tig's expression hardened. “Yeah, I have.”

“You want us to take it from here?” Nick asked. Tig was a great CO, but he was closing in on retirement and had seen more crime scenes than both of them put together. Something vital had gone out of him with each one.

Tig looked at the house, sighed heavily. “Yeah. Fuck it. I'm out of here. Been one hell of a week. Yesterday morning Lucille Mills over in The Chase hears a noise on her front porch, goes to see what it is, finds her husband Barnaby asleep on the gliding rocker.”

“Why's that weird?” said Mavis.

“Barnaby Mills went missing eleven years ago,” said Nick. “One of the one hundred seventy-nine stranger abductions that Boonie Hackendorff is always banging the drum about.”

That
Mavis remembered.

Every law enforcement officer from Sallytown down to Cap City knew about Niceville's abnormally high rate of SAs—stranger abductions. A hundred and seventy-nine of them, and all of them still listed as unsolved. The name Barnaby Mills rang a bell, faint but clear—a
ping.

Mavis shook her head. “I think I remember now. What'd the guy have to say for himself?”

“Said he could use some bacon and eggs,” said Tig with a weary smile. “Other than that, total amnesia, or so he's saying. Okay, I'm gonna leave this rat fuck with you two. I hate these things. I'm just…dog bone
tired
of them.”

“We'll take it, Tig,” said Mavis. “Go home, get some sleep. You look like hell.”

Tig smiled at her. “Yeah, I saw myself in the bathroom mirror outside the girl's room. Nick, I'll give you anything you need. You called Kate yet?”

Tig had been the one who talked Nick into leaving Special Forces and coming on as a cop in Niceville, but Kate had been the one who talked Tig into doing it. Tig had never regretted it.

“No, I hope she's asleep. She was down in Cap City with Rainey.”

“More tests?”

“Yeah. Neurology Wing at Sorrows. Dr. Lakshmi wanted a full rundown on him.”

Tig left that alone.

An attendance officer from Rainey's school had gone into the Tulip River a while back. Tig was convinced that Rainey had put her there.

But hey, the kid had “medical issues.”

“Okay. Give her my love. About this scene here, I called you in because it looked connected to the Thorsson killings. But the timeline…I don't know.”

“Dutrow would have had to go straight from here to that storm drain,” said Nick. “We'll get a time of death from the CSI boss—”

“She's in there now,” said Tig.

“If it fits, maybe we can tie this to Dutrow.”

“Jesus,” said Tig. “I hope so. I don't want two of these assholes running around.”

Florida State Highway Patrol had jurisdiction on the beaches this far south of St. Augustine, and they showed up about twenty minutes after Coker called 911: four cars, black under tan, flashers going, though no sirens, streaming past behind the house and going down the shore road.

No sirens because they liked to make an unexpected appearance at out-of-control beach parties. With the element of surprise, you saw a lot of interesting stuff, especially around the pool. Twyla stood at the kitchen window and watched them flashing by. The bass beat was still rattling the dishes in the cupboards, but that wouldn't go on a lot longer.

She smiled to herself—doing a good thing wasn't something she did often, so when she did, she savored it—poured two glasses of Barolo, and walked back out to the main room. Coker was sitting in the dark smoking a cigarette, staring out at the surf rolling in, the stars gliding above.

Twyla sat down next to him, handed him a glass. “You still mad, hon?”

Coker drank a bit of the wine, set it down on the coffee table. “No. Not mad. Worried. They'll stop in, after they've rousted the place, to give us a report. I'm not real happy about getting looked over by the Florida Highway Patrol.”

“Coker, you've been Morgan Sinclair around here for ten years, coming out here every chance you got to build up that ID. And it worked. The cops already
know
who you are, a retired banker, so they're not suddenly going to start thinking differently about you. You've been a summer resident here for longer than most of these baby troopers have been on the job. Anyway, they're not going to drop by this late. And if they do, I'll talk to them. I'll say you're asleep. Okay?”

“Yeah, well, we'll see. Maybe we should go for a long run, just be out of here for a while. We could drive down to the Keys, maybe take the boat over to Freeport—”

Twyla was not fond of the boat. To her a long voyage across open water, even in a fifty-foot Hinckley Talaria, was your punishment for using a stapler to fasten bunny ears on little kids for the school's spring pageant.

“It would take us two days to get the boat ready, and Freeport is three hundred miles away. Couldn't we just get some scuba gear and hide out in the bottom of the swimming pool for a few days?”

That made Coker smile, which made her smile, because Coker wasn't himself these days, which was like saying that a wolf wasn't enjoying his kills, was just sort of picking at them and going all Hamlet about life in the wild.

“Coker, you're not you these days. Is it The Situation,” she said, giving it the capitals.

The bass beat snapped off, and now there was only the boom of the surf and Dead Can Dance coming from the Bose, and far in the distance the stentorian crackle of a police bullhorn.

Peace had come back to the Atlantic shore.

“No, it's not ‘The Situation,' Twyla. It's those assholes back in Cap City.”

“You mean Boonie and the feds?”

“Hell no. Not Boonie. Not Nick or Mavis or Reed, either. They were just doing their jobs. I have no regrets, except for Charlie. I
like
my life. I don't do regrets, Twyla. Neither do you.”

This was true. Charlie Danziger had once observed that Twyla Littlebasket had larceny in her the way alligators have teeth.

“Then what is this stuff about Cap City?”

Coker sighed, put his head back, closed his eyes. “It's what that Harvill Endicott mutt did to Charlie. And that Delores Maranzano broad, sitting there in her condo on Fountain Square, fat and happy—”

“We're fat and happy too,” said Twyla. “Well, maybe not fat.”

Coker was quiet.

Twyla could hear him brooding, though, and it worried her. Coker had a taste for random violence.

“Know what,” she said, putting her glass down and slipping out of what little she had on, “you're right. We need a road trip. Let's do that. Let's go down to the Keys.”

Coker moved to the left, giving her some room to maneuver. “You mean, like right now?”

Twyla smiled down at him. “No, Coker. Not right now.”