Carolina Rain (37 page)

Is this man desperate?

Waiting a few more minutes, he decided he had little choice in the matter, but would do the unexpected and arrive in Michigan a different way entirely. Good soldier or not, he wasn’t going to go down for a situation that might have more to do with personal than business.

Putting the vehicle in drive
,
he
drove
toward the exit when a slumped
-
over old man leaning heavily on a crooked cane move
d
into his path. He sized up the old timer and immediately thought he must have been a foot taller when he
had been able to
stand straight. It was impossible not to think how he would look when he had grown old. He shook his head.
I
f
he grew old. In this business, there were no guarantees.

The old man stopped directly in front of the Enclave and was
searching for something
on the inside of the pocket of his worn
corduroy
jacket.

Rolling down the window, he told
the old man
to move.

The man stayed where he was, searching for whatever phantom possession resided in the pocket.

He spoke to him again. “Move your ass, old boy
.
I’ve got places to be.”

Still the old man stood his ground.

He could have backed up and moved around him
,
except
his obstruction was beginning to piss him off.

“Last
warning
,
old man. Move or I run your ass over,” he yelled, revving the engine to make his point.

Finally, the man looked up with sharp eyes and a wrinkled sneer
;
then he fingered him as he shuffled away from
the
front of the vehicle.

He laughed as he took his foot off the brake and started to roll by
. . .
then the old fart hit his mirror with his cane, cracking the glass.

“You old bastard,” he bellowed through the window. “You’re going to pay for that.”

Putting the SUV in park, he jumped out and grabbed the old man’s arm
and knew instantly that his life was about to end. He’d made a classic mistake
,
and it would be his last. The man he’d grabbed had arms of steel
. B
efore he could think another thought, the old man had straightened, spun him around
,
one
large
hand on his head
,
the other on his jaw.

“How careless,
A
gent.”

He heard the snap as fractured vertebrae severed his spinal cord. He
slumped to
the asphalt
,
breathing labored breaths as
the old man climbed into his
vehicle
and
sped out of the lot. He heard the ocean rush to the shore and noticed several seagulls flying above, screaming like they do. He wondered who his killer was and how he could
have been
so stupid. Then his body quivered
,
and the black washed over him.

CHAPTER-50

It was almost over
.
Garcia was lying dead in Fort Fisher’s parking lot, the last remnant of
a
circle that needed to be closed. Garcia
had
served his purpose by killing Garity and Tucker
.
Most of
the others were already gone.
Just
two
is all that remained,
and that
meant less chance to be exposed, but he suspected that
consequence
was too late to stop
, thanks to the Good Doctor
.
He
shook his head
. It’d be a bump in the road, no doubt.
And something he had no
desire
to endure.
However, it
was
only that
,
a bump
. He would be delayed
, but
his
unbalanced ledger would eventually b
e
righted.

Still,
he had a problem. He didn’t know
how to find
the last member of the group
.
To eliminate him, one needed to locate him. And even then, it would be a dangerous undertaking.
His missing compadre had
found a way to dance in the wind like no one he’d ever met
—
and that was disturbing because he’d
met many and seen
much over the years.
T
hat’s why he need
ed
the man flying from North Carolina
back
to Michig
a
n. If anyone could find
his
Prodigal
Son
, it was Special Agent Manny Williams. And
,
in the end, he would because that’s how these things worked.
And, how Manny Williams worked.
All he had to do was get through the next few months and supply a few mind-blowing facts to the right sources, and Williams would be all in because he didn’t know when to quit.

He laughed.
Special Agent Williams
knew no other way, and he was counting on that.

CHAPTER-51

Manny and the others
waited for Braxton to finish
another
urgent
call so
Josh
could
complete
what he
had
started when he said he knew who had killed Ga
rity and Max Tucker. Maybe that
was why his friend and boss hadn’t seemed just right. In fact, now that he thought about it, Josh had been a little out of the game since they’d reached North Carolina. Particularly after Josh had met Captain Tanner and then
had
stayed to talk to him about some vague procedur
al
issues instead of going to
the
last crime scene perpetrated by Anna Ruiz.
Manny
shook his head. He’d missed it, for whatever reason.
There
had been
something else going on with
Tanner and Josh
, and it wasn’t related to this case.
T
hen again,
he
hadn’t
exactly
been
focused on Josh, or the rest of the crew, either. He had
indulged in
th
at
one-track-train and had ignored his
own
people
and their behavior
.

Lesson learned, Williams
. P
ay attention.

Given Josh’s
recent
behavior
by not going to Aphrodite’s last crime scene
, he guessed that Tanner had
owned
something
pressing
to
share
and
wanted to discuss it
with
Josh, alone.

Josh
would have
trusted his people to do their jobs. Manny frowned.
Josh was the boss, but to break protocol, and then not tell his BAU why, was out of character
.
How many cases and how much information could his friend juggle without telling his staff
and friends?

The big man returned from the back of the plane, then nodded to Josh.

Josh cleared his throat. “It’s Ginny
Krantz
’s partner, Ben Garcia.”

“What?” said Sophie, her eyes wide. “He’s just a local skirt-chasing detective.”

“That’s what he wanted to portray and pulled it off for three years,” said Josh. “When Captain Tanner hired him, he thought he
’d
just gotten lucky. Ex-Navy Seal. Bright. He had
passed all of the psych exams with flying colors and wanted to live in Wilmington. He thought he’d be the perfect lead detective when
Krantz
retired and he would have been except
—
”

“Tanner found out something?” asked Manny, a little surprised
at the revelation
but
,
for some reason, not totally.

Josh nodded. “It seems there were some inconsistencies when Garcia took time off and where he said he was going. Tanner said he didn’t usually check up on his folks
except he’d
got
ten
an anonymous call about four weeks ago that Garcia’s mother hadn’t been in the hospital like he’d claimed
.
So
Tanner started tracking him via cell phone records, GPS reports, and calling to verify he was where he said he was. After a couple of weeks, he was going to bring him
in
and ask him what the hell was going on but
,
on that day, they’d helped to fish Garity’s body out of the water
.
A
bout that
same
time, the first Aphrodite murder
was discovered
. Tanner decided it could wait.
He thought t
he guy was probably
just
screwing around with someone’s wife anyway.”

“Let me guess
. . .
except when he noticed that his boy wasn’t anywhere to be found when Max was murdered
,
” said Manny.

“That’s right. He saw the report come across his desk a few hours before we got to his office. Garcia had run to Ash
e
ville to visit a friend and got back late. When
Tanner
saw the murder
had taken
place in Ash
e
ville, his wheels turned harder. He decided to see if he could find out where Garcia
had been on
a couple other local homicides and stumbled across his location the night Garity was killed. You guessed it; he was near that area in Wrightsville Beach.”

“All right
. T
hat all seems a bit circumstantial
, though
. I mean, Garity was found four miles away and Max in a rest area in the same vicinity with no witnesses,” said Alex.

“That’s true
. Still
,
there was enough there, including the fact that Tanner knew Garcia had a penchant for not telling the truth and
he
owned two weapons that were the right caliber. He also liked hollow
-
point ammunition. But the real kicker came when he found a receipt in Garcia’s cruiser from a local hardware
store
that
showed
duct tape and rope
, the same type of rope found around Garity’s feet.
”

“Damn. So why did he let him go out to that crime scene
last night
? What if he’d wanted to kill one of us?” asked Sophie, her eyes
burning
.

“She’s right,” said Dean.

“Damn straight,” chimed in Alex.

His phone vibrated again
,
and Manny saw that Chloe was calling back. She hadn’t left a voicemail the first time and he hoped she would
again
. Either way, his lovely wife would have to wait. He was
taken
with Sophie’s question and thought he
might know
the answer.

“I was waiting for some more info to come back from Quantico and didn’t want him to get suspicious that we
thought
he was up to something,” said Josh.

“Not to mention, you weren’t even sure what that meant, right?” asked Manny.

Manny glanced at Braxton
,
who had remained quiet during the conversation
,
then back to Josh. It was suddenly very clear.

“Garcia wasn’t just a detective. He was moonlighting for an agency, wasn’t he?”
asked
Manny.

Josh nodded. “I couldn’t get access to all of his records, including some of his military performance evaluations
—a
sure sign he was groomed for something else. I do know he was part of
the
training program that h
as
his other records locked
tighter than the gates of hell
. The thing about that is
the training commitment
seemed to end abruptly about four years ago.”