First Drop (34 page)

He stood easily, relaxed, with his thumbs hooked into his pockets, waiting. Waiting for me to spot him and make my move.

I came to my feet automatically, clutching my bag.

“Wait here,” I said to Trey, clipped, without shifting my eyes from my target. He followed my gaze and let out a gasp, half rising in his seat. I put a hand on his shoulder and eased him back down again.

“Don’t worry,” I said, trying a small smile. “If he was out to get us we wouldn’t have seen him coming.” And I hoped that it was true.

I walked down the couple of steps from the diner and threaded my way through the cars waiting for the next green light at the junction. Not that there would be any gaps for them to pull out into, even when they got the signal.

The man stood still and watched me come to him.

When I reached the pavement I stopped and made a show of glancing around.

“So where’s the heavy mob, Walt?”

“No heavy mob,” Walt said simply. “No SWAT team. Just me.”

He was wearing the same battered Panama hat I’d first seen him in, and now he regarded me gravely from under its brim. I stuck my own hands in my pockets, aware of the tensely frozen audience on the other side of the street.

“Oh really?” I said, not trying to keep the doubt out of my voice.

Walt smiled a little, the action crinkling his eyes until all I could see were pinpoints of a gunmetal grey beneath his washed-out brows. “Let’s just say that Harriet and I kinda persuaded young Andrew to call off his dogs until he’d had time to check out your story some.”

“And?”

He nodded slowly. “And so far, it checks out.”

“So, why are you here?”

I didn’t bother to ask how he’d found us. I didn’t really need to. That first morning Trey and I had eaten breakfast with the old couple, the kid had been full of the Spring Break Nationals, shooting his mouth off about the event. I remembered thinking at the time that Walt had paid unusual attention to him. Now I realised it was probably from habit of half a lifetime spent in criminal investigation. Never overlook the smallest fact. You never know when it’s going to come in useful.

Like now, for instance.

Walt didn’t answer straight away, his eye apparently caught by a huge drophead Chevy Impala with metalflake paint and gold wire wheels that was being driven by a kid who didn’t look old enough to buy cigarettes. Walt shook his head and turned back to me.

“I called that young feller you mentioned – John MacMillan,” he said. Only someone of Walt’s years could get away with referring to a policeman as senior as Detective Superintendent MacMillan as “that young feller”.

I started to nod, then paused as a thought struck me. “On a Sunday?”

“Oh, you mention multiple homicide and kidnapping and it tends to kinda get folks’ attention,” Walt said softly. “Even on a Sunday.”

“Yes, when you put it like that, I suppose it does,” I said, my own voice wry. “So, what did he say?”

Walt took his time about replying, giving me a thorough scrutiny. It took effort to stand calm and casual in the face of it.

“He said you’d damned near gotten yourself killed on a coupla occasions since he’d first met you,” Walt said, still watching me minutely. “Said you’d just about laid down your life to protect the people who were important to you.”

His eyes flicked away from me briefly then, shifting to the little group at the diner across the street and to one face in particular. I didn’t have to follow his gaze to know which of them he was looking at.

I felt my chin come up and tried not to make it a challenge. “MacMillan say anything else?” I asked, neutral.

“Yeah,” Walt returned lazily, swinging his attention back to me. “He said you had good instincts and as how I should probably trust them.”

“And is that what you’re going to do?”

Again, Walt was silent for a moment, frowning while his mind turned over. I didn’t push him. Whatever he was reaching a decision on, it was clearly heavy enough to require such thought. Rushing him would not, I reckoned, be in my best interests.

“I guess so,” he said at last, quietly, and he nodded almost to himself. “The guy you called Oakley man?” His tone made it a question.

“Yeah.”

“His name is Haines,” he said, flat, “and you were right – he’s a cop but that’s not all he is.” His gaze searched my face for reaction but I didn’t have one to show him. “When he’s off duty he moonlights as a security consultant. Early last year he did a little private work down in Miami for a company manufacturing auto parts.”

I shrugged. I didn’t see the significance. “So?”

“At that time the head of security at the company was a lady called Gerri Raybourn.”

I couldn’t keep that one from making its mark. It hit me like a fast unexpected blow to the stomach, stealing the air from my lungs in a rapid hiss. I’d known Gerri was behind Whitmarsh, but confirming her connection to Oakley man made her solely responsible for everything that had happened.

A whole host of chaotic thoughts tumbled out of the back of my mind, jostling against each other, striking sparks. And following them was a slowly spreading black rinse of anger.

Gerri Raybourn had murdered Sean. It might not have been her personally who pulled the trigger, but she’d done it, nonetheless.

I looked back at Walt, aware that my face had locked down and my body had stiffened with the shock.

“Has Special Agent Till picked her up yet?”

“On what grounds?” Walt asked, his voice reasonable. “The only person who’s accusing her of anything is you and, you have to kinda admit Charlie, right now that don’t account for a whole heck of a lot.”

“So what are you saying, Walt?” I asked bitterly. “If I don’t turn myself in, she gets away scot free?”

“No,” he said, voice careful. “But it would sure help if you could provide some evidence.”

I went still. “What kind of evidence?”

“Well, you’re maybe the only person she’s likely to make any kind of a confession to,” he said. “Just supposing you were to get to talk to her, and just supposing you was to be wearing a wire of some description.”

“So, your nephew’s looking for someone else to do his dirty work for him,” I said.

That earned me a raised eyebrow and a calm stare that made me regret my hasty jibe. It was only stubbornness that kept my face defiant.

“Andrew’s a fine agent and he’s a fine young man. Fair-minded and thorough,” Walt said. “But he has to work within the law, not outside it. If we – you – can bring him something solid, he won’t ignore it, that I can safely promise you.”

I tilted my head and gave him a cynical smile. “You reckon you can talk your nephew – not to mention the FBI – into planting a wire on me and sending me all the way down to Fort Lauderdale to try and prise a confession out of Gerri?” I asked.

“Gerri’s not in Fort Lauderdale,” Walt said. “She has a time-share apartment a little ways down the coast from here and ever since there were reports of you and Trey being in this area, she’s been staying there.”

“And the wire?”

“Well, I don’t have the access to that kinda equipment that I used to,” he admitted, “but I got one of those little voice-activated memo recorders that works pretty good.” He nodded towards my bag. “It would fit in there OK and she’s not likely to search you.”

I glanced back across the street. Trey was on his feet now, looking poised to flee. I gave him a small wave to try and reassure him. He sank back into his chair again but didn’t appear any less tense, even so.

I thought of Sean, dead and mutilated in a Florida swamp. Of all the ways I’d feared our relationship might end, that hadn’t been on the list.

I turned back to Walt, who was standing with his hat brim tilted so the sun was out of his eyes.

“OK,” I said. “Where do I find this time-share.”

Walt studied me for a moment, his face grave. “If you’re sure you really want to do this, Charlie,” he said. “I’ll take you there myself.”

Walt drove me south in an eight-year-old Lincoln Town Car with cracked cream leather trim. We didn’t speak much once we were on the road and I was happy enough with that. The mood I was in, I wasn’t looking for polite conversation.

Walt drove down through Daytona Beach and crossed back over the Intracoastal on the same William V Chappell Jr bridge we’d used when Trey and I had gone to meet Henry. There’d been a lot of water under it since then, both physically and metaphorically.

In daylight the buildings looked faded and even a little shabby, the colours washed out without the reinforcement of their night-time neon. It matched my mood – down-at-heel, subdued.

I’d entrusted Trey to Xander and Aimee’s care, much against his will. He’d thrown a controlled tantrum at the prospect of being left behind but I didn’t have the time or the temper myself to stand that kind of bratty behaviour from him. After a few futile attempts at whiny persuasion, he seemed to realise as much and gave up trying. He settled for quiet and sulky instead, barely able to bring himself to say goodbye or good luck to me.
Well sod you, then.

“Look after him,” I’d said to Xander and he’d nodded, face serious.

“Don’t sweat it,” he’d said. “He’ll be fine.”

Aimee had grinned at me. “Go kick some ass, girl.”

I’d promised them I’d call Trey on his mobile as soon as I was done. Then I watched them walk away from the little diner together. They stopped by the kerb a little way further down the street and were about to cross when Trey suddenly glanced back at me, frowning.

He knows,
I thought.
He’s worked it out.
I turned my back on it and jogged through the slow-moving traffic to rejoin Walt, who was waiting for me on the other side of the road.

Whatever doubts I may have had about trusting Trey’s safety to anyone else, I dismissed them. The only alternative to Xander and Aimee was leaving him with Walt, which could be the same as handing the kid over to the authorities. I had a sneaking suspicion that the old couple could only hold out against their nephew and the all-consuming government body he represented for so long. Better not to put temptation in Special Agent Till’s way by having the boy dangled under his nose. Much better that he simply didn’t know where either of us were.

The only other alternative to that was to take Trey with me. That idea was out of the question from the start. If I could get Gerri Raybourn to admit the part she’d played in Sean’s death I was planning on doing more than tape-recording her and the kid had already seen too much death in my company. Not quite the kind of thing Keith had been hoping for when he’d made some throwaway comment last week about the fact I was British being good for broadening Trey’s horizons.

Now, as I sat in the faded luxury of Walt’s car listening to something in the rear suspension creaking every time we hit a lump in the road, I found myself wondering coldly where Trey’s father fitted in to all this? How much of the responsibility did he share for Sean’s death?

The answer to that one didn’t so much hit me as rise slowly and uncomfortably into my mind, like sitting in the bath while it fills from a slow-running cold tap. Livingston Brown had told me that he’d seen Keith leaving the house in Fort Lauderdale apparently of his own volition. But he also said the man had seemed nervous and in a hurry.

Supposing that wasn’t because Keith had been running away. Supposing Brown had misinterpreted the reason for Keith’s unease and instead it was because his every move was being watched by people who’d told him they had already kidnapped his son.

As the thought formed, I was half-tempted to let it go but it stuck to my fingers like static cling and I couldn’t shake it loose. Little things kept popping into my mind. Like the fact that Whitmarsh had known instantly from Henry’s e-mails that the one they were missing was Trey, not Keith.

So Keith hadn’t done a runner. He’d been taken.

And Gerri Raybourn was the one pulling all the strings.

My resolve hardened along with my certainty. I turned away from the window and glanced across at Walt in the driving seat.

“How much do you know about Ms Raybourn?” I asked.

“Oh this and that,” Walt said, voice easy and casual as ever. “She’s well-respected in her field. Did ten years with the Bureau, as a matter of fact.”

“Ah,” I said dryly, “so that’s why Special Agent Till doesn’t want to move against her without overwhelming evidence – she’s part of the old boy network.”

“Former agents are treated just the same as everyone else,” Walt said firmly but without showing irritation. “I checked her records and she left more’n three years ago. Went through a messy divorce and her ex got custody of the kids. He got laid off from his job so she’s having to pay him off and put her eldest through college. I guess she found she could make a little more money on the outside than she could working for the government.”