“Pull the damn rope!”
“Tell me what I want to know.”
“I don’t know!”
“Bullshit.”
“Please!”
The gator was gaining, swimming faster.
“I can’t die like this!”
“This is the last time … who sent you?”
“Orders came down from Senator Logan’s camp.”
“Who in his camp?”
“I don’t fucking know! Swear to God!”
“Gator’s about thirty seconds from you.”
“I heard it was Timothy Goldberg. He runs Logan’s donor campaign.”
“What do they want?”
“The girl dead.”
“What girl?”
“Courtney Burke. She’s a huge liability for Logan. Please!”
I set the phone down, lifted my Glock and fired a shot in front of the gator to scare it. It submerged beneath the surface. I pulled the rope — fast, hand-over-hand, reeling in the terrified soldier. I grabbed his belt and lifted him up and out of the river, the gator rising to the surface less than twenty feet away. The man flopped on the dock, exhausted, breathing hard, vomiting. I played back a few seconds of his confession on video. He looked up at the video screen on the phone, his face in sheer disbelief. He closed his eyes.
I said, “Get up.”
“Wha—”
“Up!” I lifted him to his feet, left his hands tied, picked up the shotgun, and chambered a shell. “Let’s take a walk.”
“Where?”
“To your car.”
I followed behind him. We walked to the highway and more than one hundred yards west. He’d parked the car under some live oak trees off the road. I said, “Here’s the plan. You’re getting off easy tonight. You’re going to drive away, meet with your contractor and tell him your confession is on video — taped under the moonlight, good sound and a clear picture. Your team is going to let Goldberg and Logan know that if they continue hunting Courtney Burke, I will upload this video to YouTube. Let’s see how fast it’ll go viral. And then let’s see how fast Logan’s presidential bid goes down in flames. Turn around.”
He turned around and I used my knife to slice through the duct tape. I stepped back, tapped him between the shoulder blades with the shotgun and said, “Get out of here. Deliver the message and all of this stays buried. If you ever return, you won’t walk away.”
He opened the door to his car and turned back to me. “Who the hell are you and where the fuck did you train?”
I was silent, the cicadas echoing in the woods.
“The girl … is she your daughter? Is that why you’re putting the crosshairs across your back?”
“I’m doing this because it’s the right thing to do.”
He shook his head, started the car, and drove down the road, the red wash from taillights spattering against the cabbage palms and live oaks. I watched him drive past my driveway.
This time he didn’t tap the brakes.
67
The next morning I met Dave for breakfast at Crabby Joe’s, a small restaurant plopped on the side of a fishing pier off Daytona Beach. After I told him what happened on the river, I held out a flash-drive and said, “It’s all on here. I made a copy to give to you as an insurance policy of sorts.”
He looked over his hot cup of black coffee. “Insurance?”
“If something happens to me, upload this video to YouTube and call a damn news conference. It’s the only way Courtney, and for that matter, Kim, will be safe.”
He took the drive, looked at it for a moment, and dropped it into the pocket of his Hawaiian print shirt. “So the mercenary hit man was hired by Logan’s top dog, Timothy Goldberg, and ostensibly by Logan himself. The guy’s got ice water in his bloodstream. Regardless, dismiss with this talk of something happening to you. All right, what we have is the seamy side of presidential politics captured on a steamy, alligator-infested river. And now, Sean, the old proverbial truism is most applicable to you: when you’re up to your ass in political alligators, what happens if you drain the swamp and find the bodies?”
“Logan’s people know where they’re hidden. I’m hoping I bought some time for Courtney. That phone number I gave you, did you manage to find a physical address?”
“Of course. I found an address and an ID.”
“What’s her name?”
“Katherine O’Sullivan.”
“I wonder who she is … and what’s her relationship to Courtney Burke?”
“Could be a relative or a friend. If she’s Courtney’s mother, that means you certainly aren’t her father. And that, my friend, is one hell of a relief. Ponce Marina might return to its former sleepy self.”
I stirred my coffee and looked at the breakers rolling below us on the beach, the briny scent of the surf drifting up through quarter-inch spaces between the planks in the weathered pier. Through the enclosed screen, I watched a seagull perched on the dock railing turn to face the breeze across the Atlantic.
Dave sipped his coffee, his eyes filled with deliberations. “I know, after all is said and done, it would be nice getting to know a daughter you never knew existed. Sometimes truth is a double-edge sword, it often heals the heart by cutting the heart. It leaves scars. A magician’s secret, once revealed, shows the truth behind the illusion, and in doing so, the show is never quite the same.”
“I have no illusions.”
“Maybe not, but you’re human. You have hope or you wouldn’t do what you do and you wouldn’t be the man you are. Look, Courtney still faces murder charges. If she’s acquitted, if the charges are dropped, life goes on. Even a president-elect Logan, should he win, can survive the backstory of his wife’s decision to give up a child years ago. However, his political career won’t endure a long trial in which his wife’s biological daughter is found guilty of multiple murders.”
“Maybe this woman, Katherine O’Sullivan, is the key. What’s her address?”
Dave removed a small, folded piece of paper from his pocket. “Here you go. Maybe she’s the key to Courtney’s past and future. And if there’s no connection to your past, that means you step out of this mental cellblock and walk away, Sean. Courtney Burke becomes someone else’s concern.”
“You make it sound easy. Whether she’s my daughter or not, she’s somebody’s daughter. I don’t believe she’s guilty of murder — only self-defense, and that’s not a crime.”
“But you don’t know that yet. Leave it to Detective Grant or the feds.”
“To do what? Put a bullet in the back of Courtney’s head? Dan Grant is just trying to do his job, but the feds — at least whoever’s working for Logan, are the type of soldiers who’d roast Kim’s hand over a blue flame and then go home to a family meal.”
“Maybe this Katherine O’Sullivan is the link to Courtney’s family.”
“The only way to find out is to go there. Max is napping in the Jeep. You mind taking her back to the marina, keeping an eye on her until I get back?”
“You don’t even have to ask.”
“Thanks, Dave.”
“You leaving now?”
“Right after I visit the hospital.”
After I showed my ID at the reception desk at Halifax Hospital, left a thumb print, and had my picture taken, I was given clearance to visit Kim Davis, room 222, second floor. I bought a dozen red roses in the gift shop and stepped into the elevator. The odor of bleach and hand sanitizer mixed with the scent of the roses as I walked down the long hallway. Nurses darted in and out of rooms, doctors spoke quickly into portable Dictaphones, recording detailed patient medical data but often never really knowing who it was that they were treating.
A sheriff’s deputy sat outside room 222 reading a Sports Illustrated magazine. He had a clipboard propped up on the wall behind his plastic chair. I introduced myself and had him check to see if I was on the visitors list. I was. Chalk one up for Detective Dan Grant.