The Blood Red Indian Summer (27 page)

“I should have known better, too,” Des said, glancing over at the Deacon. “You said something to me earlier today that should have set off alarm bells in my head. Only it didn’t—not until we were sitting down to dinner.”

The Deacon frowned at her. “What did I say?”

“That men don’t change. That they are who they are.” She looked back at Calvin. “You are a low-life street hustler who only looks out for himself—even when you’re living large in a waterfront mansion. You have no moral code and zero conscience. You helped yourself to your own daughter because you felt like it. And when things started to go south, you tried to push the blame off on the son-in-law who took you in. You’re sly and you’re devious, Calvin. But you’re not smart. The state can’t bring Tyrone to trial on the rape charge unless Kinitra swears out a criminal complaint against him. And she’d be compelled to give up a sample of her baby’s DNA—which would prove that
you
are the father, not Tyrone. There was no way in hell you were ever going to get away with this. Don’t you see?”

“Wasn’t thinking that far into the future,” Calvin grumbled. “I was strictly thinking survival. Get the other cat before he gets you. I’ve spent half my life in a cage. I live by the code that I learned there, thanks to y’all. You’re the ones put me in there. You made me the man I am today.”

“So these murders are
our
fault,” the Deacon said to him.

“Absolutely.”

Rondell’s finger tightened on the trigger. “And what about Kinitra?” he cried out, trembling with rage. “Whose fault is that?”

“I got me a likeness for the young girls. I ain’t proud about it. But it is what it is. And I take what I want. That’s what a man does. He don’t ask for permission. He takes.”

“She’s your own daughter, you filthy bastard!”

“Kinitra is one fine-looking young girl. And once my blood gets to boiling, there ain’t much I can do to stop myself. The good Lord knows that. He’s always testing me. Sometimes I fail.”

“You will
die
for this!” Rondell snarled.

“We all die,” Calvin said with a shrug.

“And we all know the truth now,” Des said. “You’ve forced it out of him, Rondell. Good job. Why don’t you let us take it from here? Just put that gun down. It’s over now.”

“It’s
not
over,” Rondell said with chilling certainty.

“You folks don’t have to worry yourselves none,” Calvin said, sneering at Rondell. “He don’t have the balls to pull that trigger. I can tell from a man’s eyes if he’s got ’em. This one’s just a little bitch.”

“You shut up!” Rondell screamed at him.

“Don’t do it, little brother,” Tyrone said pleadingly. “You’ll mess up your whole life.”

“I-I
have
no life,” Rondell sputtered at him. “Don’t you get it? I loved her. And he destroyed her. She’s
gone
!”

“She’s not gone, Rondell,” Jamella spoke up. “She’ll be home from the hospital tomorrow. And she’ll need you now more than ever.”

“Son, I want you to listen to me,” the Deacon said. “I’ve been around a lot longer than you and I know a few things. I know that right now you can’t see how you will ever deal with your pain. But you will deal with it, I promise you—provided that you act like the responsible man you are and put down your gun. You did what needed doing just now for the girl who you love. Now let us prosecute Calvin through the proper channels. Believe me, he will pay.”

Rondell kept the Glock pressed to Calvin’s head. “Yes, he will. He will pay right now. On your feet, Calvin.”

Calvin’s eyes widened. “Why, what are you—?”

“On your feet!” Rondell ordered him.

Calvin got slowly to his feet. Rondell used the Glock to prod him over to the edge of the sofa so that he could get right behind him, his left forearm wrapped around Calvin’s throat. He was using the bigger man as a shield.

“He will pay right now,” Rondell repeated, backing the two of them toward the rain-spattered French doors that Mitch and Winston had come through. “He will pay.” When they reached the doors, Rondell groped around with his left hand for the wall switch, flicking off the outdoor floodlights. He and Calvin were no longer backlit. There was only darkness behind them. “He will pay.”

Rondell paused there for a brief moment now with his Glock against Calvin’s head, the two men lit from above by the beams of the ceiling track lights. There was an incredible intensity to that light. An incredible intensity to that moment. Neither man moved. Not one person in the whole room moved. Time seemed to stop. Everyone was frozen there in place, their eyes gleaming, faces drawn tight, bodies poised for action. For an eerie instant, Des felt as if they were all living inside “The Night Watch” by Rembrandt.

But this was no painting.

And Rondell’s finger on the Glock’s trigger began to move now. Not at normal speed. In slow motion. It all seemed to go down in slow motion.… The shift in Calvin’s posture as he waited for the fatal shot, expecting it, resigned to it. His eyes closing one last time as Rondell fired off the round that blew away the side of Calvin’s head. Calvin sagging to the gleaming hardwood floor, a lifeless sack of meat and bone … Until suddenly everything returned to normal speed and Rondell was dropping the gun and running out of the French doors and into the pouring rain, Monique shrieking in horror from the sofa.

Toni was the first one out the door after him, flicking on the floodlights as she ran by, her SIG drawn. Rondell was splashing his way across the lawn down toward the beach.

“No, don’t hurt him!” Tyrone barked as he went sprinting right past Toni, leaving her far behind. Tyrone Grantham possessed extraordinary speed for his size.

Clarence, the former Clemson small forward, raced right past her, too. Toni dropped to one knee on the wet grass, aiming to take Rondell down with a leg shot. But she had no shot. Not with those two very large men between her and Rondell.

“Come back, little man!” Tyrone hollered after him. “Come baaaack!”

Jamella stood in the doorway weeping over the body of her father as he bled out onto the floor. Chantal led Monique out of the room, her hand over the traumatized girl’s eyes so she wouldn’t look at him anymore.

The rest of them hurried across the lawn in the chilly, wind-driven rain—Yolie and Des in the lead, Mitch, the Deacon and Winston bringing up the rear.

Rondell had made it down to the dock. He cast off the lines and jumped aboard
Da Beast,
which no one had bothered to cover against the rain. But Rondell didn’t care if its seats were wet. And with a
varrroooooom
he had its mammoth 1200-horsepower Cobra supercharged engines roaring. He was just starting to pull away when Tyrone came hurtling down the dock toward him. Tyrone didn’t stop running. He dove right off the end of the dock—only he was a fraction of a second too late. Instead of touching down aboard
Da Beast
with his fleeing brother, he ended up in the river with a tremendous splash.

“Help me, Cee!” he cried out frantically. “Help me!”

“Man can’t swim!” Clarence roared as he dove in after him with all of his clothes on. “Here, cuz, I got ya! Don’t flail your big arms—you’ll drown us both! Relax, I got ya. You’re okay.”

He swam them away from the dredged dock area to shallower water where they could stand, water streaming from their clothes as they watched Rondell speed out into the middle of the choppy, mile-wide Connecticut River, the cigarette boat’s xenon running lights swiveling left-right, left-right as he steered frantically downriver toward Long Island Sound. There were no other boats out. Not in a storm like this.

“Call the Coast Guard,” Yolie ordered Toni. “We’ll need launches out in the Sound. And chopper support if they can fly in this. He can outrun whatever they’ve got but he can’t go forever.” To Tyrone she called out, “How much fuel have you got in that thing?”

“Maybe a quarter of a tank,” he called back, his eyes never leaving those swiveling lights. “Needed filling next time we took her out. He won’t get far.”

“He won’t get far is right,” Clarence said. “I swear, he’s going to flip that damned thing. Don’t know how to leave the wheel alone.”

Jamella joined them out there now. She wore some of her father’s blood on her yellow shift. And a strangely impassive expression on her face.

“You okay?” Des asked her, concerned that she might be in shock.

“I’m fine,” she answered quietly, shivering from the cold rain.

Des took off her hooded rain jacket and put it around her.

Tyrone rushed out of the water to her. “Girl, you got to go back inside in the house.”

“I don’t want to go inside,” she said in that same quiet voice. “I don’t want to be there with him.”

“But you’ll catch cold out here. That’s no good for you or the baby. Go back inside, okay? We’re okay.”

“We’re
not
okay. I’m so sorry, Tyrone.”

“What for? You got nothing to be sorry about.” He kissed her softly on the mouth, caressing her smooth cheek with the back of his battle-scarred hand. “We’ll get through this, I promise you. We just got to get that freaked-out little man back on dry land. He’ll be all right. He’s a respectable individual with a spotless record. Can plead temporary insanity or something. People will understand.”

“Where in the hell is that little dude going?” Clarence cried out.

Where indeed. Because Rondell was no longer streaking downriver toward the open water of the Sound. Instead, he was coming around in a wide arc that was sending him
up
the windswept river in the direction of the old stone railroad bridge and, beyond it, East Haddam and Hartford.

Toni, who’d just put out her distress call to the Coast Guard, said, “I’ll call them back and tell them him he’s changed course. And notify our own marine responders up the line. But I don’t get it, Loo. What’s he doing? Now he
can’t
get away.”

“Makes no sense,” Yolie agreed, watching him in bewilderment.

“Sure it does,” Mitch said. “Because he’s not trying to get away.”

The Deacon glanced sharply at Mitch before he turned to Yolie and said, “I agree. You can call off the pursuit, Lieutenant Snipes.”

“Call it off?” Tyrone protested angrily. “Why?”

“Because he’s not trying to get away,” Mitch said again.

“Man, what in the hell are you?…” Tyrone’s eyes widened. “Oh, Lord.” He no longer had to ask Mitch what he meant. It was obvious to him.

Obvious to all of them now that Rondell was headed straight upriver, letting
Da Beast
loose with a tremendous roar. The supercharged cigarette boat had to be going at least seventy-five miles per hour as he closed in on the railroad bridge, its running lights casting bright beams on the granite pilings that had been stoutly supporting the old bridge for more than a hundred years. The pilings were spaced wide enough apart to allow dredging barges and other big ships to pass on through. Each of the supports was marked with bright red warning lights that could be seen from miles away. There was no mistaking where the pilings were. Consequently, hardly anyone ever rammed a boat into one of them.

Not unless they really wanted to.

Rondell drove
Da Beast
directly into one of the bridge’s centermost granite support pilings. The boat exploded on impact. Its quarter-tank of fuel was plenty enough to set off a ball of fire that shot at least 500 feet into the rainy air. Witnesses later reported seeing it from as far as ten miles upriver. The explosion was felt by residents twice that far away.

“Call Amtrak,” Yolie ordered Toni. “Alert them that their bridge just took a major hit. They’ll have to shut down all of their trains between New York and Boston. I’ll call Homeland Security. They’ll probably be getting a hundred calls in the next sixty seconds from neighbors who think we just got attacked by Al Qaeda. Des, could you?…”

“On it.” Des got busy contacting the emergency marine responders who’d close off the river and deal with the burning wreckage.

The Deacon stood by quietly and observed. He did not interfere.

Tyrone, Jamella and Clarence could only huddle there together, hugging each other and sobbing.

“I’ll see you a little later,” Mitch said to Des somberly when she’d finished making her calls. He was profoundly shaken by what had happened. “I’m going to walk Winston home. The girls will be worried about him. And I want to check on my parents. The power was out when I left. I want to make sure they’re okay.”

“Tell them I’m sorry about dinner. We’ll try dinner some other night, okay?”

“Sure, I’ll tell them,” he said, his gaze fastened on the dock at their feet.

“You did good tonight.”

He looked up at her, his eyes searching hers. “Did I?”

“Hell, yes. You cracked the Plotka-Halperin killings wide open.”

“Des, I didn’t crack anything open. And now two more people are dead.”

“Calvin got what he deserved.”

“But Rondell didn’t. He was a nice guy. He didn’t deserve this.”

Des looked out at the flaming pieces of wreckage that were strewn across the oil-slicked water. Then she took his hand and squeezed it. “You’re absolutely right, he didn’t. Neither did Kinitra. Now you know why I sit up all night drawing portraits of victims until my fingers bleed.”

“No offense, but I wish I didn’t know these things.”

“So do I, boyfriend. Believe me, so do I.”

E
PILOGUE

(
TWO DAYS LATER
)

T
HE FOUR VIOLENT DEATHS
that occurred that stormy evening went 24/7 on the cable TV news channels, sports channels and Internet gossip sites. The public just couldn’t seem to get enough of the story. Not that the public actually knew the real story. Only the people who were actually there in Tyrone Grantham’s living room knew the real reason why Rondell shot Calvin. But they weren’t talking. And Kinitra certainly wasn’t. In fact, the name Kinitra Jameson was never so much as mentioned. The public only knew the version of the events that was fed to the media by Yolie—which was that Calvin had confessed to several Connecticut State Police officers, as well as members of his own family, that it was he who had murdered Stewart Plotka and Andrea Halperin. An enraged Rondell had shot Calvin and then taken his own life despite everyone’s best efforts to stop him.