Retribution: The Second Chances Trilogy Book Three (37 page)

Under the partial cover of overhanging trees, Hoop maneuvers along a final stretch of boundary that, according to his calculations, will connect to Wheelwright Road. Sure enough, at the turning marked by yet another stone pillar, he recognizes the view. Although he’s seeing it from the opposite end of the road and a utility truck is parked where buses were lined up, it’s the same one memorized from the wedding album picture.

He dives for deeper cover in case this isn’t a regulation utility truck. With his back practically up against the spiked iron fencing that resumed at the last pillar, and his front lashed by needled branches, he sidesteps along till he draws even with the truck. It’s a big one, the kind with a basket that goes up and down for reaching overhead wires. It’s got the name of an electric company marked on the side, along with an emblem of some kind. He can’t see what the workers are doing, but nothing says it’s not routine maintenance. And nothing says they’re not installing spying devices and stun wires.

After they leave, there’s nothing to learn from the telephone pole they were servicing. Nothing he can see from the ground, nothing he can see with the naked eye. Those parts of the fence that show above the bushes don’t look meddled with either, but that doesn’t mean he’s ready to grab the bars, never mind that the rooster didn’t get sizzled earlier. Same as after leaving the church, he’ll have to write everything down before he knows what to make of it.

Come nearly full circle, he estimates the distance covered was five miles. Give or take. How many acres that comes out to he can’t guess. But whatever the number is, it’s too many to ponder when there’s so much else to puzzle over.

Well ahead of the driveway into Terra Firma, Hoop scoots across Wheelwright Road and into heavy cover on the other side. From there, he approaches his campsite as though it might have been burglar-alarmed while he was away. He listens as much as looks for signs of a bushwhacker before entering the brush heap concealing the tent and all his belongings. He holds his breath while he does a quick accounting of those belongings and finds everything the way he left it, including the valuables wrapped in a sliced-off tent flap and burrowed into the roots of the bicycle tree.

The accounting draws attention to the supply of food and drink taken from the guest house larder. There’s not much left. It won’t last much longer if he doesn’t cut way back on eating and start catching rainwater to drink. That vexation can be thought about after he’s set today’s learnings down on paper.

He squirms deeper into the tent-cave and shines the flashlight on the last pages written in the notebook. The entries here were hardest to put into words. These observations were set down soon after he recognized the voice in the pub—after he could no longer shut out the nagging echoes of what that voice had revealed in the church. This writing represents the true turning point. The beginning of the end, as some would say. The point when he accepted the loss of Audrey along with everything else the FBI was said to have taken from the New Jersey storage unit. The point when he surrendered Hector Sandoval by giving the gravel-voiced cop what was coming to him. The point when he knew he would not be going back to America.

He reads this over with a strange kind of satisfaction, uncaps a pen and adds:

Always
strike a blow to the head before using the knife
.

After that he takes extra pains writing down everything seen today.

Nate sheds the anonymity of a London taxicab at the nearest intersection to the King’s Road offices. Staying with the cab this long represents partial adherence to the new operating procedures; getting out of it a few hundred feet short of destination represents something more characteristic of Colin—a heedless show of independence.

He moves at a brisk pace, head down, coat collar up against the wet, blustery weather. Amanda’s request that they—he, Emmet, Brownie, and herself—maintain lower profiles than usual is not without merit. It stems from the grim observation that if Jakeway could zero in on Detective Grillo, he could zero in on anybody else insanely seen as being in his way. But this creeping around under the radar, garaging the Bentley except for longer trips, and avoiding the underground for the duration, does come at a cost to convenience.

Amanda is at her desk when he reaches the offices. She frowns a little when he breaks one of her place-of-business rules by giving her a quick kiss.

“Sorry” he says and strips off the wet coat before she can see he came part of the way on foot. “Must be the day for it,” he says, breaking another unwritten rule by sitting on the corner of her desk.

“Day for what?” she says without looking up.

“Nothing, nothing at all. What are you so intent on?” He tries without success to decipher what she’s doing.

“No, you first.” She snaps shut the leather portfolio she’s seldom without. “The meeting with Emmet. How did it go? How was his trip to the States? Did he
really
see it—Aurora’s head, I mean?” Amanda’s all shivery attention now. “Was it super gross? Sickening? Could he tell anything from it? Could he tell it was her?” she asks.

“He said it looked pretty bad, pretty degraded,” Nate replies.

“But wasn’t it preserved in—”

“According to Emmet, the solution it was in was a type of embalming fluid never meant for long-term preservation, and the container Jakeway kept it in was full of contaminants and wasn’t sealed all that well. Don’t forget, while no one ever really doubted what it was—who it was—positive ID came from dental records because nothing about it was recognizable . . . as her, I should say.”

“Oh, yeah. Right. I did forget. But I have to know . . .” Amanda lowers her voice even though no one else is within hearing, “Did Emmet throw up when they showed it to him? You can tell me, I won’t spread it around.”

“If he did, do you think he’d have told me?”

“Oh. I guess not. Then tell me why he wanted to see it while he was in New York.”

“I’m not sure he wanted to. He may have thought it was expected of him. I did give him a fairly strong nudge in that direction when I reminded him of the marks I saw on Aurora’s neck at the accident scene . . . before the decapitation took place. It’s no secret I was hoping against hope that those tracks were still there to support my claim that she was a last-stage junkie at the end.”

“Were they? The marks, I mean.”

“No, they were no longer visible. Emmet said there was just too much tissue damage. Rot, by another name. Not that it matters now. Enough bad’s already been proved about the heartless fucking cunt to see her through a couple of hells.”

“Wow, I never heard you speak
that
strongly about her before.”

“I don’t think I’ve ever felt that strongly about her before. This
is
her fault, you know. This Hoople Jakeway monster
is
of her making, you know. At least the way I see it. Here we have Laurel and Colin competing to take blame, but it all goes back to Aurora.”

“Wait a minute. Laurel’s blaming herself now? Good grief, what for?”

“Earlier today, when I updated her about Emmet’s trip, she spoke as though she and she alone was responsible for Grillo’s death. She maintained that he wouldn’t have been in harm’s way if she hadn’t held back what was known about Rayce’s—”

“Spare me. This is getting really, really old. If she’s responsible, then so are we. And so is the system. Any system you want to name, any system that would let the Jakeway creep out of the States and into the UK and allow him to get this close.” Amanda narrows her eyes as well as the gap between the thumb and forefinger she holds up.

“What’s that, equal opportunity condemnation? You think it’s fair to blame immigration, local law enforcement, the FBI, and Scotland Yard all in one breath?” Nate says.

“I don’t see why not.” She flashes indignation and reopens the portfolio.

“I think they’re doing the best they can.”

“Sure they are.
Now
they are. Now that one of their own was struck down, but what about when one of ours is about to—”

“Amanda, honey . . . Take it easy. We all want to blame someone or something. Even ourselves, the way Laurel is. This is hard on us all, this living under the gun, but it can’t go on forever.”

“No, it can’t, but don’t you mean under the sword?”

“If you want to put a fine point on it, yeah, the sword.”

“If you’re trying to be funny, you’re not.”

“That was unintentional. And if you’re looking for literal context in legend—the Damocletian legend—it’s Jakeway who’d be under the blade, not Colin. Remember that it was Dionysius—synonym for rock star—who invited the fawning and probably jealous and resentful Damocles—synonym for Jakeway—to observe his riches and revels firsthand and seated him beneath the blade to demonstrate at what cost came power and privilege.”

“Wow. I never thought of it that way.”

“Neither did I. Not until now, but it wouldn’t be a bad idea to remember Jakeway’s also waiting for a sword to fall.”

“You mean in the form of capture.”

“Yeah. I agree with Emmet’s assessment. The reckless slaughter of a police detective says a lot about his attitude toward capture. He’s resigned to it, he may even be impatient for it. But not until he’s achieved his goal.”

Amanda reopens the portfolio and slides it across the desk. “That’s kind of what I’ve been working on, expanding Emmet’s theory that Jakeway’s got nothing to lose at this point—that he’s behaving as though he knows he’s got nothing to go home to. But mainly I’ve been trying to figure out how Detective Grillo was traced to Middlestone and what we should expect next.”

Nate examines a faultless analysis of the current crisis starting with the day they now know Jakeway to have falsified his way into the UK. Included are her usual charts and diagrams, time lines, speculations, and substantiations.

“I believe it was news of Laurel’s miscarriage that drew him to Middlestone.” Amanda indicates a list of media reps known to have swarmed the Middlestone hospital until a decoy ambulance lured them away. “I think Jakeway concluded, as anyone would, that in an emergency situation the patient would be taken to the nearest medical facility and from that, further concluded that Colin and Laurel must live in the general vicinity of Middlestone. I know that sounds flimsy, but it
is
a starting point.”

“No flimsier than some of the other theories I’ve heard.”

“Then try this one on for size.” She leans across the desk and flips open a page in her portfolio he hasn’t looked at yet.

“These entries refer to the laminated card you told me about—the list of names and numbers you put together for Colin when you thought he needed prompting and he stuck in the picture wallet without even knowing what it was just to get you off his back and then the picture wallet was stolen from his L.A. hotel room practically under Bemus’s nose, presumably by Jakeway disguised as an Hispanic minibar attendant, and when Colin told you about the theft and you told him what was on this mini-directory, that was the beginning of the end and—”

“Okay,
okay
, I’ve got it.” Her breathless account sweeps through him like a sudden gust of cold wind.

“Good, because that angle absolutely must be pursued.”

“The numbers printed on that card are all different now. The entry codes have all been changed.” Nate scorns her concern. “Even the phone numbers have been changed since then.”

“Not the numbers, honey, it’s not the numbers I’m worried about, it’s the street names, it’s the place names you said—”

“Shit! . . . Then again maybe not.” He struggles for composure. “There are no signs at either end of Wheelwright Road. You mentioned that just the other day when—”

“Maybe so, but the road
is
named on the map inside this folder.” She produces a small brochure depicting tombstones. “The day of the burials I took that from the church vestibule, where they have all kinds of handouts related to the region. I was just curious about why they were promoting grave markers as an attraction and found out a lot of people like to do tracings—rubbings, they call it—of ancient stones and that made me find out there are quite a few other maps—special interest maps you could call them—that show Wheelwright Road as the third one over from the road the church is on and I also managed to find out that these maps, these brochures, are in fairly wide distribution.”

To her credit, she doesn’t gloat over this discovery; she doesn’t say in so many words that Jakeway, if armed with the incendiary card from Colin’s picture wallet and a readily available tourist brochure, could be in an excellent position to make his move. She doesn’t say it, but she clearly believes it.

Nate steadies his interior being and moves away from the desk with anger and confusion vying for control. The anger is directed at himself for overlooking this potential and at Amanda for bringing it to his attention; the confusion covers all fronts, blankets the need to examine yet another set of plausible theories on short notice.

“When you were detained after discovering Grillo’s body, did you tell the police about the meeting in the church?” Amanda presses on.

“No,” he replies without facing her. “It never came up. Their interest centered on why I was at the guest house so early in the morning. And I know Emmet didn’t mention the church when he was questioned about the purpose of Grillo’s intended meet with Scotland Yard.”