Inside Out (9 page)

16

Winter watched as Angela Martinez concentrated on the puzzle in front of her, working as methodically as a jeweler checking a consignment of diamonds. She rubbed each piece of the anodized steel with a Teflon-saturated cloth and then set it on the newspaper. When she was finished putting it back together, the puzzle revealed itself as a Glock pistol. Forty-caliber shells were lined up at attention like soldiers. One by one she inserted the rounds into the mouth of the magazine, then slapped the back of it against her palm to seat the bullets. She jacked the receiver, fed the chamber, removed the magazine to add a round, and slammed the magazine home. Satisfied, she put the gun into her hip holster and snapped the thumb-release strap.

“Think it'll shoot now?” Cross asked.

“Better than yours.”

“In a million years you couldn't outshoot me.”

“Give me a break, Cross. There's nothing you can do that I can't do faster and better.”

“Sexual discrimination suits filed by crybaby dykes and bleeding-heart judges have screwed up everything by trying to make all of us equal. Well, that's just paper equality, it can't make women physically equal to men. Strength and stamina can't be altered by court rulings.”

“You think you're stronger than me?” Martinez said, snickering. “Twenty dollars says I can take you arm wrestling,” she told Cross calmly.

“You have twenty dollars, Cross?”

Beck reached into his wallet and tossed a twenty onto the center of the table. “Arm-wrestling contest? I'm in. Even odds?”

“Whatever you can stand to lose,” Martinez told him.

“Who's covering your losses?” Cross asked.

“There won't be any,” she said with total confidence.

Five minutes later the kitchen was crowded and there was a heap of money in the center of the table. When Cross and Martinez squared off, all the money was on Cross.

Jet laid a ten down and pressed it flat. “On him to win.”

“Traitor,” Martinez said.

“Sorry. I'm a woman, but I've never been called a stupid one.”

The cat fled the room and Dylan was suddenly standing in the doorway.

“Winter, you want in?” Greg asked, ignoring Devlin.

“I don't gamble,” Winter said. He figured Martinez was going to get creamed and he didn't want to waste money, or take any of hers.

Dylan walked over to the table and thumped a hundred dollar bill down. “On Deputy Cross,” he said. “Can you cover this,
señorita?”
He winked. “Or maybe we can just work out some kind of a trade.”

Martinez stared down at the bill and then at Winter. He could see her confidence faltering.

“On Martinez to win, okay?” he said, taking his wallet out. He took out five twenties and tossed them near the pile.

“Sean, honey,” Devlin called out cheerfully. “Come watch your deputy get his noogies kicked in again.”

Sean came into the room and stood near the stove. Cross put his elbow on the table. Martinez slipped off her jacket.

“You can take off your shirt, too,” Cross told her. “Might distract me.”

Martinez planted her elbow on the table and straightened her forearm.

“What little hands you have, my dear,” Cross crooned, as he took her hand in his. “You want to stand up and lean in to get some leverage?”

Greg covered their hands with his. “When I let go, it begins.” He looked at Martinez. “Anybody wants to back out, do it now. There's a lot of money on the table.”

Greg counted down from three, then let go, and for a second Martinez's arm sank slowly back toward the table. Her face contorted. Cross seemed to be enjoying himself. When Martinez's arm was almost touching the surface of the table, Cross tilted his head and looked at her quizzically. Martinez smiled and started moving her opponent's arm back up to center.

Cross started to sweat. He clenched his teeth, and the veins in his temples began to bulge.

“I know how you're feeling, Cross,” Martinez said. “It's like the heavens are all out of balance and your little Super Boy world is about to collapse around you. Welcome to Club Humiliation, you smug male bastard.” She smiled as she inched Cross's hand back toward the surface. He was giving it everything he had.

“You want to stand up, for leverage?” she mocked. Cross's hand hit the table hard. He sat there, bewildered.

“Again, double or nothing?” she asked. “Left hands?”

The room was silent.

Martinez stacked the bills tidily and picked them up. She took Devlin's C-note and Winter's twenties and handed them to Winter.

“How the hell did you do that?” Dylan asked Martinez, incredulous.

“Black beans,” she shot back.

Winter pocketed the cash and repeated something to Dylan that the killer himself had said earlier. “Things aren't always as they seem . . . darling.”

“I thought you didn't gamble, Massey?” Devlin snapped back, his eyes smoldering.

Winter shrugged. “I don't.”

Devlin pivoted on his heel and left the room. His wife stared into Winter's eyes for a long second, then smiled and followed Devlin out.

17

Tuesday

Winter awoke to Greg tapping his shoulder.

“Time to get up and run. Mind some company this morning?”

“Of course not. You feeling a sudden urge to exercise?” Winter asked.

“Nah. You mind running armed this morning?”

Winter's mind snapped to full alert. “Aw, not Devlin.”

“Not Devlin,” Greg replied, smiling. “The Devlins.”

“Tell you what I'll do. I'll jog with the Devlins if you'll get me home for Rush's birthday. Just one day. It means a lot to me, Greg.”

“I'll consider how best to handle your request. See, I'd need someone to take your place for just a day or two and—”

Winter sat up. “Damn, my foot hurts. Maybe I shouldn't run this morning. You jog with the happy couple.”

“Okay, okay I'll do it. Somehow I'll get you home.”

When Winter arrived on the porch, Greg was leaning against a post, watching the sunrise. The Devlins were already on the sand, stretching. Winter had done his push-ups, crunches, and stretches before he left his room.

Since Monday, Winter had been running a course that took him from one tip of the island to the other. He ran south against the tree line, followed the bow of the beach north, then back. Ten laps was a nice run.

Winter stepped down onto the sand.

“I hear you're quite a runner,” Dylan commented.

Winter didn't respond.

“Inspector Nations, didn't I hear you say something the other day about Winter competing in the Ironman? That the illustrious deputy finished in the top twenty twice. That's biking, swimming and running. Man's a triple threat.”

“Y'all better get going,” Greg told him curtly.

“What hasn't our deputy accomplished?” Dylan mocked. “I wouldn't be surprised if his turds came out shrink-wrapped in cellophane.”

“Dylan!” Sean scolded. “That's crude.”

Dylan's eyes registered the reprimand, but he didn't shift his gaze from Winter. “I'm sorry, dear. I get
crass
and
crude
mixed up. If I called the inspector there a jigaboo—would that be
crude
or
crass?
Sambo,
crude
or
cute
? Nigger,
crude
or
factual?”

“Dylan?” she murmured placatingly. The color had drained from her cheeks.

“Darling, didn't anyone ever tell you that you shouldn't correct family in front of the help,” Dylan told her, his voice icy. She looked away, embarrassed, perhaps angry.

Greg smiled. Winter knew that, under other circumstances, Devlin would have been sifting through the sand for his teeth. Winter swallowed his anger at Dylan's remarks.

“Best go on your run now, Win,” Greg said. “Before the sun rises and sets Mr. Devlin there on fire.”

It appeared to Winter that Devlin was trying to see how far he could push before someone took him on. The killer knew how valuable he was to the attorney general, and he knew he could push pretty hard before anyone would dare push back. Winter had seen it before, a criminal who had to admit to himself that he had turned into the one thing all criminals hated—a rat—then needed to take his self-loathing out on others.

They started running north along the surf.

Dylan was quiet for the first hundred yards. Then he said, “Your boy sure was touchy this morning. Probably not getting enough sleep. You keeping that buck awake?”

“You here to run or talk, Devlin?” Winter said.

“Here to run, ironman.” Dylan sprinted ahead, showing off.

Winter stayed even with Sean. Her stride looked effortless; her arms and legs showed muscle definition from a pattern of exercise.

“We have a gym in the house,” she said, as if reading Winter's mind. “Weights and Nautilus machines. Dylan works out and runs every day. He says staying in shape is the single most important thing there is. You get lazy, let the workouts slide, and everything slows down: stamina, strength, eye–hand coordination. Even your mental ability.”

Winter managed a grunt.

“Winter—may I call you Winter?”

“Sure.”

“I want to apologize for my husband's remarks. He's never been remotely like this before. He's on edge, and who can blame him, really?” She sounded as if she was almost trying to convince herself.

“You don't need to make excuses to me.”

She stared ahead. “Dylan really isn't racist. He just—”

Winter had had enough. “No disrespect intended, ma'am, but I don't care what he was like before all this. We refer to the people we protect as packages, footballs, or units. The package's prejudices don't mean anything to us. An apology to Martinez or Greg won't make any difference, because they don't give a damn what Mr. Devlin thinks or says—just what he does. But as far as I can see, the idea that any of the deputies on this crew might get hurt trying to protect his life is an absurdity of biblical proportions.”

The effect of Winter's words was immediate. Her lips tightened, and she lengthened her stride, pulled ahead of him, and caught up with her husband.

Winter watched her body as she ran. It was a thing to admire. He would have liked to leave them, but he had to make sure nobody appeared from out of the water or behind the dunes and blew Dylan's brains out.

Something like that, while erasing an impurity from the surface of the planet, wouldn't look good on Winter's record.

18

“Assistant U.S. Attorney Avery Whitehead from the New Orleans District is visiting us today, kids,” Greg Nations announced at breakfast. “Let's look sharp.”

When Jet came through the kitchen door, Winter caught sight of the Devlins at the dining room table. Sean Devlin's expression was unreadable, but she was not holding hands with her husband—nor was there any laughter. That seemed like a healthy development. He couldn't help but wonder if Sean might be taking a fresh look at the wisdom of her spousal choice.

An hour after breakfast, a Navy-version Hughes 500 landed and deposited Avery Whitehead and his assistant.

Whitehead struck Winter as being one more arrogant prick in an expensive suit who felt condescension was a God-given right.

Greg led them into the dining room, where he searched them and their briefcases. Afterward, Whitehead set up at the table like a grand inquisitor, his assistant at his right elbow. When Dylan Devlin entered the room, he sat across the table from the prosecutor. Winter and Dixon followed Greg out, leaving the three men alone.

Forty minutes after Whitehead's arrival, Sean came outside, sat down in a chair four feet from Winter's, and opened her laptop. Within a few seconds she was totally immersed in what she was doing. With her hands on the keyboard and her eyes closed, she seemed to contemplate, then type. Then she read what she'd typed and repeated the process. Winter watched her fingers, thinking how beautiful her hands were. There wasn't anything about Sean's appearance that wasn't pleasing to the eye.

When Jet's cat sauntered around the corner of the house and rubbed against Sean's ankle, she set the computer on the side table and lifted Midnight onto her lap. She reached into her pocket for a small plastic bag, took out a piece of bacon, and offered it to the cat, who sniffed it before turning his head away.

Winter could see enough of the computer screen to make out the form of what was there. Sean caught him staring and turned it toward her.

“I like poetry,” he said.

“Do they teach poetry at police school?”

“You know the shortest poem in the history of literature?”

“No.” Her eyebrows rose.

“Fleas. Adam had 'em.”

She struggled not to smile. “You memorized all that? It's hardly ‘The Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner.'”

Winter was fully twenty lines into that poem before she interrupted him. “You learned Coleridge in high school? That's like Frost—hardly Ginsberg.”

Winter began reciting “Howl.”

“Okay, now I feel foolish.” She cocked her head. “And you have me convinced that you aren't entirely one-dimensional. Tell me how you got interested in poetry.”

“Before I went to police school I got a degree in American lit. I taught high school for four years before I decided police work was safer.”

She studied him for a moment, then turned the laptop toward him so he could read it. “Okay, critique this.”

Winter was sorry he had asked, figuring he would have to lie politely—until he started to read it. The lines contained powerful images. Winter wasn't easily impressed, but with amazing clarity, Sean had captured a child's relationship with a distant father. It struck a chord with Winter, and not just because of his own experience.

“It's very good,” he told her after he had read it through a second time.

“That an honest assessment?” she asked suspiciously.

“Yes, it is. I'd like to read more. I really would. You have a gift.”

She smiled. “Maybe I can print them out for you when I get to a printer.”

“Maybe you can publish under your new name,” he said.

She looked at him quizzically. “You mean under a pseudonym?”

“You'll get new identities after Dylan testifies and has served whatever time he ends up getting.”

She turned off the computer and closed the top with a snap. “That may be what they told you, but it isn't like that. Why would we need new names?”

It was his turn to be confused. “He wouldn't live long using Devlin.”

“What are you talking about?” she asked angrily.

He had never before seen her eyes filled with fire, and he had no idea why she was getting so upset with him for stating the obvious.

“A standard requirement in witness security dictates that you can't have any contact with anyone you knew before you joined the program. You'll get new identities and move to a new place to start over. That's just how it works,” he told her.

She smiled as though Winter was some poor, addled idiot who had just declared that candy bars had souls.

“You're quite mistaken, we'll be perfectly fine after he testifies.”

“Mrs. Devlin, when a man commits twelve murders for profit and testifies against the man who hired him to do them, a name change
and
a rural Argentine address wouldn't hurt. The world is getting to be a smaller place every day.”

“Murder? You said twelve murders?” Her hands trembled as she moved the cat to the floor gently, then picked up her laptop. She walked inside, letting the screen door slam behind her.

Winter followed as she strode into the dining room and pulled the door shut behind her. Was it possible that Sean imagined that her husband could testify against Sam Manelli and then go back to their previous lives as though nothing had happened? He took a seat in the living room and picked up a golf magazine.

Voices filtered through the closed dining room door—rising and falling—building in intensity. Winter couldn't make out what they were saying.

No more than a minute from the time she went in, Sean stormed out and strode down the hall to her bedroom. Thirty seconds later, Dylan followed her, shooting Winter a nasty look.

Winter stood. He could see Whitehead and his assistant in the dining room with their heads close together, talking in low tones, like conspirators. He could hear the Devlins' angry voices coming from their bedroom.

Greg hurried into the dining room. When he came back out, he said to Winter, “Tell the pilot to start his engine. They're done.”

Five minutes later, the helicopter rose and disappeared over the trees, taking Whitehead and his assistant with it.

Winter walked back into the house. Dylan was now yelling at Sean, and she was giving it right back to him. Greg stood listening in the hallway, hands on his hips.

“What started it?” Winter asked him.

“Whitehead told me you did,” Greg answered.

“I made a comment to her about their getting new names after the trial, and I think it was the first Mrs. Devlin had heard of it. It was like she didn't know why they're here. That's not possible, is it? Think maybe she thought this was summer camp for psychopathic husbands?”

Greg shook his head. “The prosecutor is not pleased that she's upset. If she's upset, Dylan's upset, and he wants Devlin as calm as possible. Whitehead said that I obviously didn't make it clear enough to the team that there were to be no conversations about the behavior that put Devlin here.”

“I didn't with
him.
You didn't say not to discuss that with his wife. You don't mean to tell me that nobody told her what he did?”

“Maybe we should start thinking about that security business real soon. Whitehead strongly hinted that he might mention his displeasure with both of us to the A.G.”

The cat broke from the kitchen and made a run for the front of the house, territory Jet had banished him from entering.

The animal sat beside Winter, stared down the hall, and seemed to be listening to the Devlins' argument.

“Just be glad you're a cat,” Winter said, wishing he hadn't spoken to Sean Devlin at all.